Once a year, a jury convenes to select the best album to come out of Canada, and they award that album with the Polaris Music Prize. Yves Jarvis’ All Cylinders won the award last year, and past honorees include Arcade Fire, Feist, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Caribou, Fucked Up, Kaytranada, and Backxwash. This year's Polaris Prize will be awarded at Toronto's Massey Hall in a special Sep. 22 ceremony, featuring performances from many of the nominees. The Polaris people have just unveiled the shortlist of 10 albums up for this year's prize, and you will be happy to learn that masked Quebec math-rock absurdists Angine De Poitrine were not snubbed.
I don't necessarily think of Angine De Poitrine as a listening-to-the-album type of band, but their Vol. II still made the Polaris shortlist. So did emotive electronic veteran Beverly Glenn-Copeland's Laughter In Summer, electroclash innovator Peaches' No Lube So Rude, dance/R&B explorer Rochelle Jordan's Through The Wall, indie singer-songwriter Charlotte Cornfield's Hurts Like Hell, and Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq's Saputjiji.
Other artists on the Polaris shortlist include indie pop duo Bibi Club, Halifax R&B project Aquakultre, former Chic Gamine singer Begonia, and genre-agnostic Quebec artist Les Louanges. Here's the full list of nominees:
• Angine de Poitrine - Vol. II
• Aquakultre - 1783
• Begonia - Fantasy Life
• Bibi Club - Amaro
• Charlotte Cornfield - Hurts Like Hell
• Beverly Glenn-Copeland - Laughter In Summer
• Rochelle Jordan - Through The Wall
• Les Louanges - Alouette!
• Peaches - No Lube So Rude
• Tanya Tagaq - Saputjiji
Tanya Tagaq won the Polaris Prize with her album Animism in 2014, and Charlotte Cornfield, Bibi Club, Begonia, and Les Louanges have all made the shortlist in previous years. Both Beverly Glenn-Copeland and Peaches have been awarded the Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize, which goes to classic Canadian albums that came out before the Polaris Prize started.
In addition to the prestige that comes with the award, the winner of this year's Polaris Music Prize will collect $30,000 from the Slaight Family Foundation. The 9/22 Massey Hall award ceremony will include performances from Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Tanya Tagaq, Charlotte Cornfield, Bibi Club, Aquakulture, Begonia, and Les Louanges, while Slash Need will perform an interpretation of Peaches' No Lube So Rude.
