The Polaris Project – June 13-15, 2023

it’s that time of year again! wasn’t entirely sure i wanted to do this a third time. i feel like i’ve already exhausted everything i can think of to say about music, but i’ll try to produce at least one novel observation across the 40 albums to follow. can she do it? you’ll just have to keep reading to find out…

with that insanely gripping lede out of the way, here are the first ten albums longlisted for the 2023 Polaris Music Prize:

“Darling the Dawn” by ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT

now, i like to think of myself as someone who keeps up-to-date on Godspeed You! Black Emperor-related musical developments, so how the hell was i unaware of another Efrim Menuck side-project? this new album from him and Ariel Engle (of Broken Social Scene, and presumably other stuff too, fame) is pretty good. (off to a great start with the descriptive prose, maggie! keep up the good work!) it’s drone music, so you already know what to expect – 8-plus-minute-long songs with precisely one guitar chord sustained for the entire time. is this Menuck’s best work? i mean, no, but it’s hard to describe what exactly about it is better or worse than other entries in the same genre. all i can say is, “the GY!BE guy did it again,” more or less. i assume Ariel Engle also has some solo work i can check out some time. she’s got a nice voice.

highlights: “The Sons and Daughters of Poor Eternal,” “Lie Down in Roses Dear.”

3.75 stars out of 5. that’s right, folks. i’m bringing back my absurd and reductive “quarter-star” rating system. you will have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

Blue Rev by Alvvays

truly one of the best Canadian bands working right now. i can’t think of a single dull song or low moment on any of their three albums to date. infectious, supremely catchy dream pop/shoegaze/surf rock. i guess if i had a criticism of Blue Rev as compared to their first two records, it would be that the lyrics aren’t as memorable on this one? but they don’t stand out as being bad, so what am i even complaining about? not going to pick nits here.

highlights: “Pressed,” “Very Online Guy,” “Pomeranian Spinster,” but you can’t go wrong with any of these cuts.

4.5 stars out of 5.

Don’t Trip by Aquakultre

there’s something about the production here that i find a bit overwhelming, but i can’t figure out exactly what. many of the songs on this R&B/funk album have “a little too much going on” in the background, so to speak. Don’t Trip ends up feeling like a collection of discrete vocal and musical parts, rather than a cohesive whole. i can’t really be more specific than that because i’m talking out of my ass here. i’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether i’ve made any sort of lucid point at all. but i gotta give Aquakultre credit for (1) having some fun keyboard and trumpet sections, and (2) titling a song “Lunch.” i love that type of meal!

highlights: “Hitwoman,” “Africvillean Funk.”

3.25 stars out of 5.

Watin by Aysanabee

i feel like a huge fucking asshole for saying this, given the subject matter (the songwriting was inspired by the life of the musician’s grandfather, the eponymous Watin, an Oji-Cree man forced to attend residential school where he was assigned the name “Walter” and prohibited from speaking his own language), but i’ll be that guy: the music on this album isn’t that great. sorry. Aysanabee goes overboard with the guitar reverb to the point that the instrumentals sound like an even-more-uninspired Explosions in the Sky, and many of the choruses consist of a single line repeated ten or fifteen times. taken as a whole, the album is melodically reminiscent of faux-inspiring commercials for weight-loss medication. thematically, the album deals with the reclamation of identity suppressed by state-and-church-enforced assimilation, which normally resonates with me deeply & is why i’m such a jerk for dumping on it like this. probably a classic case of “not every thought needs to be expressed,” but i found the album too boring musically to be moved by the sincerity of its emotional content.

2.5 stars out of 5.

Clouds of Joy by Badge Époque Ensemble

this is some nice orchestral jazz pop right here. full of pleasant woodwinds and vocal harmonies, swirling keys and basslines. some of the melodies have a bit of an “archaic Christmas carol” vibe, which is a bit weird but i’m ok with it. music is allowed to sound like that! don’t know if i’ll ever revisit this, but it was great to listen to once. doing these reviews as a writing exercise allows me (forces me?) to check out a bunch of new music i probably wouldn’t have listened to otherwise, and isn’t that nice?

highlights: “Conspiring with Nature,” “Badge Époque Ensemble.”

3.25 stars out of 5.

Powder Blue by Begonia

is this finally the album where Begonia overcomes her “Adele Problem”™? (a phrase i just coined to describe artists capable of delivering technically proficient vocal performances in service of the most observationally stale lyricism you can imagine, leading me to not give a single shit about how good their voices are.) the answer is, unfortunately, “no,” but it would’ve been cool if she had!

that’s not to say the music is unpleasant, because the instrumentation on the songs is decent. no complaints there. i’m pretty sure she collabs with the Royal Canoe guys on that, and they’re good at their jobs. Begonia herself is just Not For Me at this point, and that’s ok. not everything has to be.

lowlight: “I’m Not Dying,” which contains what i consider to be the least credible cliché in all of breakup song writing – the sentiment behind “you ain’t on my mind no more / i can tell you that for sure.” yeah, i bet. that must’ve been why you went to the trouble of writing and recording a song about how little you care, right? you sure showed them!

2.5 stars out of 5.

Le soleil et la mer by Bibi Club

now if Begonia had been singing in French (a language of which my ability to speak it has atrophied significantly since high school), i probably wouldn’t have found the lyrics tedious! Le soleil et la mer, sung mostly in French, has nothing to do with Begonia, of course; she’s just the most recent point of reference since i finished listening to her album & immediately launched into this one. it’s something that i do think about on occasion when writing about Francophone Polaris nominees: what if the words are just as banal as some of the Anglophone stuff i criticize, but i don’t notice because i can’t speak French well enough anymore? you know what, i’ve just decided: don’t care. not my problem. because i really enjoyed this. Bibi Club’s bandcamp bio describes their sound as “living room party music,” which captures their vibe pretty well!

highlights: “La nuit” (really dig the Florist/Tim Hecker/early-2000s-Radiohead-style synthesizer tones on this song), “Parasite.”

3.5 stars out of 5.

nature morte by Big Brave

this one sounds basically identical to all their other albums, which is fine by me because i’m a certified Noise Rock Enjoyer. didn’t hit quite as hard as Vital or Au De La (though, as before, the question of why i prefer certain drone songs to others remains hard to pin down), but i will definitely keep listening to Big Brave for as long as they keep putting out new stuff. i’d love to see these folks play live some time!

highlights: “The One Who Bornes a Weary Load,” “The Fable of Subjugation.”

3.75 stars out of 5.

Les gens qu’on aime by Philippe Brach

the album opens with a spoken line: “les gens qu’on aime ont tous mourir” (“the men we love have all died.”) that chipper introduction inaugurates a series of chill, mid-tempo acoustic guitar-led folk tracks, with the occasional instrumental thrown in the mix. i’d like to be able to discuss lyrics and themes, but, again, it’s in French. i’m just happy i retained enough of the language to be able to translate the first sentence. get off my case!!!

highlights: “Tic tac” (has a repeating piano riff that sounds slightly foggy and out-of-tune in the same way my grandparents’ old piano did; triggered a nice little sense memory there), “Un peu de magie,” “J’ai de l’air.”

midlight (a word i invented so i’d have an excuse to talk about a song that confounded me): “Ôk Canada.” as you might expect from the title, it’s a cover of “O Canada,” but it’s not your grandaddy’s rendition of our national anthem, nossir! it’s accompanied instead by a sparse, minor-key synth arrangement – presumably to express discontent with the country? i say “presumably” because i spent the whole song sitting there, expecting some sort of ironic twist that never materialized. no modification of the lyrics, just the three standard verses, sung verbatim. i can kinda see what Brach is going for here, but it’s a strange inclusion when contrasted with the rest of the album & made even weirder by its sequencing as the third-to-last track. i’m not sure that’s anything.

3.5 stars out of 5.

Everywhere I Used to Be by Mariel Buckley

an album of pensive blues-country songs about drinking, lost love, nostalgia for better times, life on the road, escaping your depressing hometown – that sort of thing. hits the usual notes and you bet your ass there’s boatloads of pedal-steel guitar in this! in fairness, there are only so many forms of human artistic expression and only so many thoughts worth setting to music, so it’d be silly of me to hold the above against Mariel Buckley. it’s not like i can write anything better. (come to think of it, i could’ve used that to caveat literally any of the reviews so far or forthcoming.) not necessarily my preferred genre, but not bad by any means! there’s some good stuff in here. i’ll be sure to check her out at Folk Fest next month.

highlights: “Neon Blue,” “Hate This Town.”

3.25 stars out of 5.