It would appear that Caribou, Owen Pallet and Broken Social Scene are all shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize.
The Polaris Music Prize is similar to similar to the UK”™s Mercury Music Prize. It is given each year by Canadian music business insiders, including of journalists, bloggers and broadcasters, to the Canadian album they believe has the highest artistic merit regardless of the style of music or the number of records sold.
Criteria for consideration requires the artist to be Canadian and for the album to be at least 30 minutes/8 tracks long and truth be told the Canadians are currently producing a large amount of very good music as can be seen from this years long list of nominees which included The New Pornographers, Basia Bulat and Young Galaxy.
Those that have made it into the shortlist announced today include previous winners Caribou and Owen Pallett, as well as the mighty Broken Social Scene and The Besnard Lakes. Check out the albums up for the award below, and click the links to hear them on Spotify.
- The Besnard Lakes, The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night
- Broken Social Scene, Forgiveness Rock Record
- Caribou, Swim
- Karkwa, Les chemins de verre
- Dan Mangan, Nice, Nice, Very Nice
- Owen Pallett, Heartland
- Radio Radio, Belmundo Regal
- The Sadies, Darker Circles
- Shad, TSOL
- Tegan and Sara, Sainthood
The award ceremony takes place on September 20th when the winner will be able to walk off with head held high and $20,000 in their pocket. We pity the judges, as it”™s going to be a very close call this year”¦