Polaris takes Watson closer to paradise

Montreal’s Patrick Watson wins the prize for best album at a gala ceremony in Toronto

Polaris prize winner Patrick Watson steps away from the microphone during his performance at Monday night’s Polaris gala in Toronto.
Image supplied by: Supplied by Frank Yang / chromewaves.net
Polaris prize winner Patrick Watson steps away from the microphone during his performance at Monday night’s Polaris gala in Toronto.

On Monday night at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto’s east end, grand jury members for the Polaris Prize chose an unlikely candidate for the second year in a row.

The award, which goes to the best Canadian album of the year, is based solely on artistic merit and comes with a $20,000 cheque. In its inaugural year, it went to Final Fantasy’s album He Poos Clouds. On Monday, the cheque and the accompanying hype went to Montreal’s Patrick Watson for his album Close to Paradise.

The gala’s ceremony, and the after-party at the Drake Hotel, was attended by musicians, both nominated and not (Kevin Drew, Basia Bulat, Owen Pallett), as well as literati representing media across the country. Overall the turn-out was decidedly high-brow—Ben Mulroney was nowhere to be found.

I was in attendance as one of the prize’s jurors—one of 170 from across Canada who nominated five albums each to create the shortlist. The final award was decided by a jury of 11 rock journos, including CBC Radio 2’s Laurie Brown, the Edmonton Journal’s Sandra Sperounes and Cam Lindsay from Exclaim!, who deliberated in a back room during the gala.

Watson’s atmospheric record successfully beat out bigger-name shortlist contenders including the Arcade Fire, Feist and Joel Plaskett. When Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett, strangely clad in an orange, sleeveless vest, announced Watson as the winner, most of the audience—and certainly other jury members in the balcony—seemed uncomfortably surprised.

Six of the shortlisted artists—Joel Plaskett, Julie Doiron, Miracle Fortress, the Besnard Lakes, Patrick Watson and Chad Van Gaalen—attended the gala. Each performed a short set after being introduced by a jury member, responsible for making a speech on behalf of that album.

Microphone and sound issues rendered much of the evening inaudible from the balcony inlcuding the evening’s host, Grant Lawrences’ comments (which were reportedly funny—all I could see was rapid flipping through a Ghostwriter-style composition book, only to hear him gravely announce the next presenter). Speeches by the presenters faded in and out, though no one could miss hearing Edge radio personality Dave Bookman’s introduction for Julie Doiron’s album. After changing the lyrics and singing a special New Pornographers version of the Beach Boys’ California Girls at last year’s gala, he repeated the act with Doiron lyrics.

Throughout the presentation, he pronounced Doiron’s surname wrong every time.

Doiron performed an invigoratingly rough set, backed by her former Eric’s Trip bandmates. The Moncton band, one of the few performers who appeared excited to be playing, added a riskier element to the songs from Doiron’s Woke Myself Up.

The Globe and Mail’s Carl Wilson introduced absentee nominees Junior Boys. His speech, which was largely indistinguishable had one rather disappointing moment of mystifying audibility.

“This is the land of the silver birch, but also Marshall McLuhan,” he said. Ostensibly, Wilson was trying to make a point about a Canadian cultural identity, but even hopeful Junior Boys fans were left to puzzle out Wilson’s meaning in the context of their album So This is Goodbye.

Although the Junior Boys, the Dears, Feist and the Arcade Fire weren’t present to perform or accept their nominations, interview and music videos were shown in their absence. The Arcade Fire nomination was accepted by Pallet, who did the string arrangements for their album, Neon Bible, though he forgot the speech they had e-mailed him at home. By Divine Right drummer Mark Goldstein was more responsible, reading an e-mail from Feist, bemoaning her inability to attend the gala, saying she was playing that night in a British club that could fit “five times over” inside Toronto’s Rivoli venue.

Performance highlights included Miracle Fortress playing from Five Roses, and though the live performance fell short of Graham Van Pelt’s bedroom recording by losing its vocal layers and concrete complexity, it had enough of the sweet, poppy lyrics and creative arrangements to give listeners a craving for the album.

My top pick for the award was the Besnard Lakes, whose imaginative, genre-evading rock album The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse had a lot of critics expecting them to take home the prize. The band’s set disappointed, however, by not coming anywhere close to the peaks available on their Beach Boys-inspired single, “Devastation.”

Half of the shortlist hails from Montreal, including Watson, who poked fun at fellow Montrealers the Besnard Lakes.

“Sucker Jace,” he shouted from the platform to Besnard guitarist Jace Lasek, who also helped to produce Watson’s album.

At the star-studded (if you consider Canadian independent musicians stars) after-party on the rooftop of the allegedly hip Drake Hotel, rubbing shoulders with some of Canada’s brightest and best, Polaris prize executive director Steve Jordan’s Dick Tracy good looks and feathered fedora made him stand out from the crowd.

Asked how he felt about the night, Jordan held out his hands and looked around.

“This is amazing. Look at it all,” he said. “It’s hard to believe I had anything to do with this.”

The prize has inspired debate about the idea of awarding a prize based on artistic merit versus giving it to artists who really need either the attention or the cheque. For Watson, the award certainly met a need. While accepting the cheque, he said his band received a $16,000 dollar bill from Budget rental for wrecking a van in Fargo, North Dakota.

“Have you seen [the movie] Fargo? We crashed right in the spot where they found the money in the movie,” Watson said.

“Thanks for the $4,000 profit.”

The concept of artistic merit is a slippery one, especially for a prize that awards money as well as accolades. Though its first two years have proven successful in terms of media approval—perhaps due to the media’s role in deciding its outcome—the Polaris prize will have some serious challenges to face in establishing its role as a credible representation of the Canadian music world.

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Meghan Sheffield’s five album picks that went towards creating the Polaris Prize shortlist. * indicates albums that made it to the top ten.

1. The Besnard Lakes—The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse*

2. Rock Plaza Central—Are We Not Horses?

3. Miracle Fortress—Five Roses*

4. Tim Hecker—Harmony in Ultraviolet

5. Jim Bryson—Where the Bungalows Roam

All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.

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