The Polaris Music Prize and $20,000 was awarded to Caribou (Dan Snaith) tonight. The Dundas, Ontario native was awarded the prestigious prize for his stellar 2007 release Andorra, on Merge Records.A jury of 185 music writers, broadcasters and bloggers drew up a short list of 10 of the best Canadian albums released between June 1, 2007, and May 31, 2008.
The prize is meant to honour, celebrate and reward creativity and diversity in Canadian music, without any consideration given to sales figures.
This year's nominees include Basia Bulat, Black Mountain, Caribou, Holy Fuck, Plants and Animals, Kathleen Edwards, Shad, Stars, Two Hours Traffic and the Weakerthans.
The gala event was held at the Phoenix in downtown Toronto. In 2006, Final Fantasy's album was selected over records by Broken Social Scene, Sarah Harmer, Metric and the New Pornographers and in 2007 Patrick Watson’s debut album Close to Paradise took top honours.It was a hard fought race with all of the nominated albums being serious contenders for this coveted prize. I sure didn’t envy the jury on this one.
2 comments:
It was a really tight race. Caribou would have been my 5th choice, I think, had I been given the unenviable job as juror, but considering I had 3 tied for 1st place, that's actually pretty good.
It was a good broadcast too!
You know Barbara. Hindsight is such a luxurious thing but man I all but dismissed Andorra. And unjustly too. I really did like that record. The race was just so tight this year. So many worthy candidates.
The broadcast was excellent too. All of the live performances were so strong. I kinda wished I had made the journey to the Big Smoke to take that one in. I was really impressed with Black Mountain.
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