Post-Polaris Reflection: Karkwa, Dan Mangan and Shad

The Polaris Music Prize Gala was held last Monday, September 20 at Toronto's Drake Hotel. Quebec band Karkwa took the $20 000 cash prize home this year for the beautiful Les Chemins De Verre. The album's dainty and often poignant songwriting is propelled by swinging melodies, dreamy harmonies, rhythmic basslines and low-fi psychedelic guitars. Take fellow francophones Malajube, who were nominated for last year's Polaris, and combine it with Bon Iver's more pop-y stuff, but then mix in some diverse songwriting and instrumentation and you have something that resembles Karkwa's pretty indie-rock sound.

In July, I predicted that Dan Mangan's everyman folk-rock album Nice, Nice, Very Nice would win the title. I realize now that my prediction was a little premature and influenced undoubtedly by a 3-week-long obsessive rotation of Mangan's album. Which obviously counts for something. And I still love the album; it's probably my favourite Canadian 2010 album lyrically, but after a couple months of sitting on my prediction I began to lean towards another nominee.

I've been a big fan of hip hop artist Shad for a long time, and I'm not really all that into hip hop. He's from my hometown London, Ontario and graduated from my high school a few years before me. I remember seeing him perform on stages with my friends' high school bands, one of those stages being my high school auditorium. I bought his first album When This Is Over at Grooves Records in London, a stones-throw away from Call The Office, the last venue I saw him perform in February. But I feel like Londoners aren't the only ones who feel that kind of homeboy pride for née Shadrach Kabango. He is currently the hottest thing in Canadian hip hop, an industry that's never before picked up so much steam before the likes of him and his contemporaries. And most can agree that TSOL is a gem. A diamond in the rough, really, and an unpretentious one at that. Shad's beats are fresh and his humility refreshing. It speaks much louder than the current industry bombast, and people are listening up.

So while some might be retracting their premature predictions in favour of the actual winner, I'm questioning both the jury's and my own elections. But it doesn't matter now anyway, not until next year's roundup. This year was Shad's second spot on the shortlist, here's hoping it'll be the third time that will charm the Polaris jury.

Credit where credit is undoutedly due: Caribou's Swim and The Besnard Lakes' The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night are both incredible albums, worthy nominations, and on my rotation all the time.