As a former Polaris Music Prize juror, I still get phantom pain whenever the award shortlist is announced and the inevitable backlash begins (for well thought-out criticism read Josiah Hughes and Mark Teo’s essay, “Canadian Music is Boring,” in FFWD.) But I’m guilty of award bashing, too. After reading the shortlist, I immediately grumbled about […] More »

Shooting Guns are a wonderful anomaly. The instrumental, psychedelic doom metal band from Saskatoon recently had their album Born To Deal In Magic: 1952-1976 included on the Polaris Prize Long List, to my utter surprise and delight. Rather than approach the task of making an instrumental record as a chance to show off pure technical […] More »

Last night was the gala for the fifth annual Polaris Prize, Canada’s “increasingly distinguished” music award that shuns commercial success in favour artistic merit. This year’s winner is — surprise! — Karkwa, a band that few predicted in advance. But really, no one should be surprised. The Polaris Grand Jury likes to pull their choices out […] More »

The Polaris Music Prize, Canada’s music award for artistic merit, released its long list of this year’s nominees last week. The list is a mixture of award regulars as well as some new faces, and of the 40 acts that made the list, Tuesday Tracks already brought 15 of them to you. So today, to fill […] More »

Fucked Up, winners of the 2009 Polaris Prize, this week released their cover of the seminal 1984 Bob Geldof/Midge Ure song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” and it’s pretty great. The band used part of their $20,000 Polaris cheque to bankroll the recording, and are donating the proceeds to three important Canadian charities: Justice for Missing […] More »