The 2014 Polaris Music Prize Long List

The 2014 Polaris Music Prize Long List was announced today in Calgary.  The announcement was made during Sled Island Festival at the National Music Centre. The event was intended to help bring attention to the return of the festival after last year’s devastating floods which forced its cancellation. Some of the Centre’s priceless instrument collection was also lost to the flood. The event was hosted by Polaris Founder and Executive Director Steve Jordan.  Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, Dan Boeckner of Operators and former Polaris nominees Handsome Furs and Wolf Parade, Mark Sasso of Polaris Shortlisted Elliott BROOD and Dave Hodge of TSN were also on hand to help reveal the list of forty albums.  Surprise musical guest Basia Bulat performed songs from her freshly nominated album Tall Tall Shadow. The event was webcast live on TFO at:http://www7.tfo.org/brbr/en-direct/.

In total 189 titles made the first ballots of the 190 member jury.  Twenty three of the forty Long List titles are first time Polaris Music Prize nominees.  Of those, four have been in previously nominated groups.

“The city has been so welcoming and after what happened last year we felt it was important to reveal this year’s list in one of the most musical places in Canada. We’d like to congratulate all of the inspiring artists who made the list and the people with the easiest/toughest job in the world of narrowing that 189 worthy records to just 40 – our jury,” said Jordan.

2014 Polaris Music Prize Long List:
Arcade Fire – Reflektor
AroarA – In The Pines
Austra – Olympia
Philippe B – Ornithologie, la nuit
BADBADNOTGOOD – III
Basia Bulat – Tall Tall Shadow
Chromeo – White Women
Cousins – The Halls Of Wickwire
Cowboy Junkies  / Various Artists – The Kennedy Suite
The Darcys – Warring
Dead Obies – Montréal $ud
Mac DeMarco – Salad Days
DIANA – Perpetual Surrender
Drake – Nothing Was The Same
Freedom Writers – NOW
Fresh Snow – I
Frog Eyes – Carey’s Cold Spring
Gorguts – Colored Sands
Tim Hecker – Virgins
Jimmy Hunt – Maladie d’amour
Jessy Lanza – Pull My Hair Back
Kalle Mattson – Someday, The Moon Will Be Gold
Moonface – Julia With Blue Jeans On
Mounties – Thrash Rock Legacy
Odonis Odonis – Hard Boiled Soft Boiled
Owen Pallett – In Conflict
Pink Mountaintops – Get Back
PUP – PUP
The Sadies – Internal Sounds
Shad – Flying Colours
Shooting Guns – Brotherhood Of The Ram
Solids – Blame Confusion
Rae Spoon – My Prairie Home
The Strumbellas – We Still Move On Dance Floors
Tanya Tagaq – Animism
Thus Owls – Turning Rocks
Timber Timbre – Hot Dreams
Chad VanGaalen – Shrink Dust
Bry Webb – Free Will
YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN – UZU

The Short List will be announced on Tuesday, July 15th at The Carlu in Toronto.  The Polaris Gala will be held on Monday, September 22nd at The Carlu and webcast live on Aux.tv. The eligibility period for the 2014 Polaris Music Prize runs from June 1, 2013 to May 31, 2014. An independent jury of nearly 190 music journalists, broadcasters and music bloggers from across Canada determine the Long List and Short List. Eleven people are selected from the larger jury pool to serve on the Grand Jury. The grand jury convenes the night of the gala to select the Polaris Music Prize winner.

The Polaris Music Prize awards $30,000 to the artist who creates the Canadian Album of the Year. The runner’s up from the Short List each receive $2,000 courtesy of Slaight Music. Judged solely on artistic merit, without consideration of genre or record sales, the prize’s past winners have included Godspeed You!  Black Emperor (2013), Feist (2012), Arcade Fire (2011), Karkwa (2010), Fucked Up (2009), Caribou (2008), Patrick Watson (2007), and Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett) (2006).

About the Polaris Music Prize
The Polaris Music Prize is a not-for-profit organization that annually honours, celebrates and rewards creativity and diversity in Canadian recorded music by recognizing, then marketing the albums of the highest artistic integrity, without regard to musical genre, professional affiliation, or sales history, as judged by a panel of selected music critics.

(source: press release)