Fucked Up Wins the 2009 Polaris Music Prize

The following was originally published on Exclaim.ca.

Fucked Up Wins the 2009 Polaris Music Prize
9/22/2009 By Brock Thiessen & Jessica Lewis

Fucked Up have been awarded the 2009 Polaris Music Prize for their album The Chemistry of Common Life at a gala event held at Toronto’s Masonic Temple Monday (September 21) night. Following in the footsteps of Final Fantasy, Patrick Watson and Caribou, the Torontonian hardcore heroes will receive the coveted award, along with $20,000 and, of course, some serious bragging rights.

“Until the very moment they made the announcement, I thought there was no way in hell that we would win,” said Fucked Up front-man Damian Abraham. “This is incredible. I’m more shocked than everyone at CTV. Thanks to everyone that played on the record and Jon Drew that produced the album, everyone at Beggars/Matador, [Polaris founder] Steve Jordan and everyone at Polaris!”

Ten albums were shortlisted for the prize, narrowed down from a long list of 40. The Polaris Music Prize — given out each year to a full-length Canadian album, based solely on artistic merit — is chosen by 182 Canadian music journalists, broadcasters and bloggers who make up the Polaris Music Prize jury, with the final winner being selected by an 11-member grand jury.

In alphabetical order, the artists nominated for the Polaris Music Prize short list were:

Elliott Brood – Mountain Meadows
Fucked Up – The Chemistry of Common Life
Great Lake Swimmers – Lost Channels
Hey Rosetta – Into Your Lungs
K’NAAN – Troubadour
Malajube – Labyrinthes
Metric – Fantasies
Joel Plaskett – Three
Chad VanGaalen – Soft Airplane
Patrick Watson – Wooden Arms

This was the first year that all ten shortlisted nominees played sets of one or two songs from their nominated albums, with each band receiving much applause from the audience of family members, friends, music journalists and music lovers.

Metric played an acoustic set first, then Great Lake Swimmers and Malajube, respectively, charmed the audience, before 2007 winner Patrick Watson led his band onto the floor with backpacks of lanterns, accompanied by CBC broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi on drums.

Next up was K’naan’s inspiring set, which led into the friendliness of Joel Plaskett and family. Chad VanGaalen certainly will have the audience remembering his performance after declaring he wished Leonard Cohen was there and made some other presumably drunk remarks about micro-organisms and sloppy Suzannes.

Elliott Brood had cookie sheets and wooden spoons passed around to participate in their popular “Write It All Down for You,” and afterwards Hey Rosetta! crammed 13 people onto the stage.

Finally, the now-winners Fucked Up raised as much hell as they were allowed, which included Abraham letting his pants fall down and proceeding to morph his blue boxers into a makeshift thong.

Just minutes later, CBC Radio 3’s Grant Lawrence, Sarah Taylor and last year’s winner Dan Snaith of Caribou read out that the winner was Fucked Up. Patrick Watson and crew almost immediately dumped a bucket of ice water on Abraham after the Fucked Up singer declared “this is better than a free iPod!”

In an interview with Exclaim! after the show, Abraham said: “I never thought this would happen, and this isn’t crocodile tears, I was really like there was no way we were going to win and I was packing up my baby as they announced it and I was like… I just couldn’t believe it! I am in shock and I feel so good, I feel so good that we made a record that people feel was on par with Final Fantasy… We made a record that is kind of looked upon in that light, and that is the most flattering thing to have happened.”

Abraham also mentioned in the press conference with Lawrence that they plan to use the award’s $20,000 prize money to make a Christmas charity album, which will go towards helping find missing aboriginal women in Canada.

If Fucked Up isn’t on your radar or you need a refresher, take a look at Exclaim!’s October 2008 cover story on the band and The Chemistry of Common Life.

RoundLetters weekend update September 18-21

Hey all! There’s a few news bits for this weekend I think you should know:

Friday:

Lars Ludvig Lofgren and Ghost Trees will be playing a show at the Only Cafe tonight at 8 p.m. The Only Cafe is located at the Donlands subway stop and just an easy stroll around the NorthWest corner. Check them out! They played a very successful show in my backyard last week. Unfortunately, footage is still to come. You should also check out the Only Cafe, because it is a wonderful place.

Le Cyc will be performing their bike opera at the Music Gallery on John Street. This Guelph collective is getting a lot of attention for their cyclist, well anything, but they’ve also got pretty swell music and images that are projected along for the show – they tell quite the story! I’ll be covering this show & talking to them tonight for Broken Pencil – if you’re there, say hi!

Monday:

I found out recently I’ll be covering the Polaris Prize gala for Exclaim! So if you’re there, again, say hi! Unfortunately, I’m not cool enough to have a Blackberry or iPhone to live blog/tweet, so you’ll probably be getting your news somewhere else but I’ll be speedy as soon as the gala is over.

Who do you think will win the Polaris Prize? Will it be Chad Vangaalen? Elliott Brood? KNAAN? Metric? Malajube? Joel Plaskett? Patrick Watson? Great Lake Swimmers? Fucked Up? Hey Rosetta?

Download Chad VanGaalen’s B-Sides for Polaris-nominated Soft Airplanes

Polaris Prize 2009 shortlister Chad VanGaalen announced today that he was letting the Soft Airplane B-Sides EP up for free download on his site. (Sneakily close to the award’s decision next week).

There are nine tracks, all of which were hopefuls for the album but didn’t make the cut. They’re a bit more bedroom-made of course, but it’s charm. And his fans will eat anything up, really.

Photo by Marc Rimmer

While waiting to see if he’ll win the Polaris Prize, you can also check out his instrumental side project, Black Mold.

Download the B-Sides here.

Polaris short-listers Elliott BROOD announce new tour dates

Elliott Brood, this year’s Polaris country-rock nomination, have just announced new tour dates around Canada after the fated Polaris gala date, and believe me, they will bring their high and loud spirits if they win or not.

The tour takes them through Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, then through the states and back up to Ontario and towards the Eastern provinces.

The band will be playing the Polaris gala, with the other 9 nominees. This is the first year that all nominated bands will be performing. The grand juray was also recently announced.

If you want any indication as to how awesome an Elliott Brood show is, go watch my SPIN Earth report from London from early this year.

Tour dates after the jump.

Polaris short-listers Patrick Watson and the Wooden Arms gain more nominations in Quebec

Two times the shortlister Patrick Watson (plus his band, the Wooden Arms) have gained more nominations this week, in the Quebec Indie Music Awards.

Watson reigns proud with five nominations: Indie Pop Album of the Year, Artist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, International Career of the Year and Show of the Year. Impressive!

Whether or not Watson wins anything is up to you. Go and vote in the awards here.

For a complete list of nominations, which include Beast, Winter Gloves, Think About Life, The United Steel Workers of Montreal, Bell Orchestre, Coeur de Pirate and Thunderheist, check after the jump.

New music from The Wooden Sky and Two Hours Traffic

This week has been a good week for new Canadian music, and it’s only Thursday! Follow the links below to hear new music streaming from The Wooden Sky, a folk band from Toronto who will release their new album If I Don’t Come Home You’ll Know I’m Gone on August 25 and Two Hours Traffic, a former Polaris Prize shortlisted pop-rock band from Charlottetown, PEI, who are finally releasing their follow up to Plaskett-produced Little Jabs, named Territory on September 8.

To hear the new Wooden Sky songs, go here.

To hear the new Two Hours Traffic song, go here.

Polaris short-listers Metric experience weird things at Stonehenge

In liu of a new series of Polaris blog entries I’ll be doing (slightly in order to avoid discussing my opinion until I’m good and ready), here’s today’s entry, all about Metric, one of the most talked-about nominees so far.

CBC Radio 3 reported yesterday that the Metric gang was on their way back from the Glastonbury Festival when they stopped at Stonehenge. They realized it was closed and forlornly looked through the fence until they recognized ‘rock icons’ Spinal Tap.

Emily Haines wrote on their site:

“We were all settling in for an uneventful ride when our driver suddenly exploded with excitement. Gesturing madly to the left of the highway and veering dangerously off the main road he shouted “STOOOOONEHEEEEEEENGE”, swerved and made a sharp turn onto a bumpy dirt road full of craters. Showering the camped out hippies in dust, he tore down the road toward that famously perplexing collection of rocks. We screeched to a halt at the entrance and piled out like a bunch of fucked up clowns only to discover that Stonehenge was….CLOSED! We were staring at the stones through the fence and halfheartedly watching various generic families wander toward their cars when Joules said the words we will remember forever:  ”Um, guys, that’s…Spinal Tap!”"

And there you have it. Metric has made it clear they all have way more fun than the rest of us do.

BUT I did get to see Stonehenge in January after I moved to London for a few months. So… ha!

Now, I didn’t see any rock stars that I know of, but I did see this guy! He obviously didn’t think I was a rock star either…

Polaris short-listers Great Lake Swimmers on NBC

Apparently the bigwigs over at NBC are catching on to something, right behind ABC (a la their Pitchfork sessions). Or at least Brian Williams, anchor and resident indie-lover (really?) is. With BriTunes (he says he didn’t make the name) beginning, one of his first stops is newly minted Polaris short listers Great Lake Swimmers, currently Toronto-based.

Watch Wilson’s interview with GLS’s main-man, Tony Dekker here.

More Polaris-themed posts coming soon!