A, you may not care about this post. E, you already do.
The Polaris Music Prize has, in 5 short years, become possibly THE most prestigeous music prize in Canada. Which both a) says a lot, and b) says nothing. A lot because Canada cranks out some pretty amazing music, and nothing because we don't have THAT many music prizes. Do we?
But the winners (and the short list, and the long list) are an amazing way to discover new music. The past winner are (in order): Final Fantasy, Patrick Watson, Caribou, Fucked Up, Karkwa, and now, Arcade Fire. It almost seems funny now that back when Owen Pallett one the first prize he gave the money away, not wanting money from a prize sponsored and named for a camera company (or so the story goes).
Polaris, well, probably can't break anyone's career, but can certainly put a band on the map. So for this year's Pop Montreal, one of the biggest shows of the week was the free show at Place-des-Arts featuring last year's winner, Karkwa, and this year's newly minted Polaris winners: Arcade Fire. And this show was PACKED. And awesome. I'm sure there are YouTube videos of the performances. And you can probably see a heck of a lot more there than I could, standing a couple hundred feet from the stage, behind a tree, just trying to catch of glimpse of the big screen monitors. O.o But it was worth it.
Huh, the past 2 winners are from Montreal... I wonder if this is a trend?
-K
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