The Polaris Music Prize has revealed the Lengthy Checklist of 40 albums nominated for the annual prize. The Polaris Music Prize is celebrating its twentieth anniversary in 2025, and the group introduced two new initiatives.
The SOCAN Polaris Track Prize and 2025 Polaris Competition have been introduced together with the Lengthy checklist members at an occasion at Paradise Wine Bar in Toronto’s west finish which additionally featured an artwork set up by Polaris Group Companion Oasis Skateboard Manufacturing unit.
The Polaris Music Prize is exclusive in that it considers musical benefit solely, with out regard for gross sales figures or style. The winner acquired $30,000 courtesy of the Slaight Household Basis to the artist who creates the Canadian Album of the Yr.
Previous winners embody Jeremy Dutcher (2024 and 2018), Pierre Kwenders (2022), Lido Pimienta (2017), and Tanya Tagaq (2014).
The brand new SOCAN Polaris Track Prize class, is the primary growth of the Prize because the Corridor of Fame Heritage Prize was launched in 2015. The Polaris Track Prize can be chosen by the identical jury primarily based on creative benefit alone. On June 24, a 20-song Lengthy Checklist can be introduced, and the 5 remaining Track Quick Checklist can be revealed on July 29.
The inaugural SOCAN Polaris Track Prize winner will obtain $10,000, to be cut up between the track’s Canadian performers and the track’s credited Canadian songwriter(s).
The Lengthy Checklist
The Lengthy Checklist was compiled from the options of greater than 200 music business writers and professionals who make up the preliminary jury — together with yours really. The very lengthy preliminary checklist consisted of 189 albums.
This yr, the official Lengthy Checklist contains 16 first-time nominees in addition to two previous winners (Backxwash, Caribou) and one previous Polaris Heritage Prize recipient (Rick White, as a part of Eric’s Journey).
Right here’s a better have a look at two of the nominees that ended up on this Jury Member’s checklist.
Hildegard: Jour 1596
Sure, classical music followers, the Montreal duo of Ouri and Helena Deland is known as after the medieval German nun, composer and polymath Hildegard von Bingen. The title is a little bit of a play on phrases, and suggests a earlier historic period, however really refers to what number of days the 2 musicians spent writing and recording the 10-track album, which emerged from the extended inactivity of the COVID pandemic.
Stylistically, you’d name the music a mixture of avant-garde jazz/up to date music, RnB, electronica, and extra, with a way of creative invention in each observe. Ouri’s classical music coaching (she will lay cello, piano, and harp, alongside along with her compositional skills), emerges in observe titles like “Bach In City”, and friends by way of the musical layers in Beverly, a fascinating contrapuntal piece with ethereal vocals, Le Jardin la Nuit, and different tracks.
Kaïa Kater: Unusual Drugs
Canadian singer-songwriter, guitar, piano and banjo participant Kaïa Kater is a local of Montreal. She’s been enjoying the banjo since she was 12, and studied in West Virginia on a banjo scholarship. With a mixture of conventional banjo approach and contemporary-minded lyrics, she’s put her personal distinctive stamp on the time-honoured instrument.
Unusual Drugs is one other pandemic child, born of that contemplative time, and options visitor appearances by musicians reminiscent of Allison Russell, Aoife O’Donovan, and Taj Mahal. Kater’s lyrics deal with society’s points, like racism and sexism, imagining each revenge and therapeutic for the injuries of each right now and yesterday.
Musically, on her newest album she expands on the banjo with jazzy percussion impressed by Brian Blade, and orchestration that owes a nod to the likes of Steve Reich and his minimalistic creed, in addition to movie composer Jonny Greenwood.
The Full 2025 Polaris Music Prize Album Lengthy Checklist is:
- Artwork d’Ecco: Serene Demon
- Backxwash: Solely Mud Stays
- Quinton Barnes: CODE NOIR
- Bibi Membership: Feu de garde
- Basia Bulat: Basia’s Palace
- Caribou: Honey
- Lou-Adriane Cassidy: Journal d’un Loup-Garou
- Choses Sauvages: Choses Sauvages III
- Chilly Specks: Gentle For The Midnight
- Antoine Corriveau: Oiseau de Nuit
- Marie Davidson: Metropolis Of Clowns
- Destroyer: Dan’s Boogie
- Myriam Gendron: Mayday
- Gloin: Your whole anger is definitely disgrace (and I wager that makes you indignant)
- Saya Grey: SAYA
- Hildegard: Jour 1596
- Yves Jarvis: All Cylinders
- Kaïa Kater: Unusual Drugs
- Bells Larsen: Blurring Time
- Richard Laviolette: All Wild Issues Are Shy
- Wyatt C. Louis: Chandler
- Kelly McMichael: After The Sting Of It
- Males I Belief: Equus Asinus
- Mustafa: Dunya
- N NAO: Nouveau langage
- Nemahsis: Verbathim
- Eliza Niemi: Progress Bakery
- The OBGMs: SORRY, IT’S OVER
- Dorothea Paas: Assume Of Mist
- Klô Pelgag: Abracadabra
- Inhabitants II: Maintenant Jamais
- Ribbon Skirt: Chew Down
- Ariane Roy: Dogue
- Mike Shabb: Sewaside III
- Sister Ray: Believer
- Snotty Nostril Rez Children: RED FUTURE
- The Climate Station: Humanhood
- Rick White and The Sadies: Rick White and The Sadies
- Donovan Woods: Issues Have been By no means Good If They’re Not Good Now
- Yoo Doo Proper: From the Heights of Our Pastureland
The Quick Checklist
The Quick Checklist of 10 albums can be introduced on July 10.
What’s subsequent?
From the Quick Checklist, the 11-member tremendous jury will vote on the winners in every class.
The winners can be introduced throughout the Polaris Live performance & Award Ceremony Toronto’s Massey Corridor on September 16. This would be the third straight yr that Massey Corridor serves because the venue for the Prize gala.
The Polaris Competition, introduced by SiriusXM Canada, options new programming like Salons, Listening Events, Poster Displays, and Live shows, and takes place in September main as much as the Live performance & Award Ceremony, with the objective of shining a lightweight on among the lots of of previous nominees.
The Slaight Household Polaris Heritage Prize, the group’s corridor of fame for Canadian albums of distinction from the previous, will transfer from October into late-summer. This yr’s 12 nominated Heritage albums can be revealed on July 29.
The Gala: September 16
The Awards Gala on September 16 will embody 15 performances by nominees from the Quick Checklist.
In celebration of the Polaris Album Lengthy Checklist drop, you may get 25% off Polaris Live performance & Award Ceremony tickets utilizing code POLARIS25 — however solely till June 15.
- Discover tickets and occasion particulars [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 many years, and a artistic writing teacher for Ontariolearn.
