Polaris Prize Announces Long List

The Polaris Prize, Canada’s equivalent of the Mercury Music Prize, announced it’s long list yesterday at an event held at The Drake Sky Yard in Toronto. The Long-list is made up of the top of 40 will be narrowed to a final 10 on July 6th. The final announcement of the winner is made on 20th September 2010.

These picks represent votes cast by a Jury of media drawn from Radio, Print, Campus and the Web. Each juror gets to pick 5 titles. A number 1 pick gets 5 points. A number 2 pick gets 4 points. And so on. The jury is free to pick any title they like as long as it falls under the Polaris eligibility and was released between June 1 of the previous year and May 31 of the current. The 40 records with the highest point scores become the Polaris Long List:

Apollo Ghosts – Mount Benson (Vancouver)
Bahamas – Pink Strat (Toronto)
The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night (Montréal)
Blue Rodeo – The Things We Left Behind (Toronto)
Brasstronaut – Mt. Chimaera (Vancouver)
Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record (Toronto)
Basia Bulat – Heart Of My Own (London)
By Divine Right – Mutant Message (Toronto)
Caribou – Swim (Dundas)
Jason Collett – Rat A Tat Tat (Toronto)
Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles (II) (Toronto)
Amelia Curran – Hunter Hunter (Halifax)
Fred Fortin – Plastrer La Lune (Montréal)
Frog Eyes – Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph (Victoria)
Hannah Georgas – This Is Good (Vancouver)
Ghostkeeper – Ghostkeeper (Calgary)
Holy Fuck – Latin (Toronto)
Karkwa – Les Chemins De Verre (Montréal)
LeE HARVeY OsMOND – A Quiet Evil (Hamilton)
Greg MacPherson – Mr. Invitation (Winnipeg)
Dan Mangan – Nice, Nice, Very Nice (Vancouver)
Misteur Valaire – Golden Bombay (Montréal)
The New Pornographers – Together (Vancouver)
Owen Pallett – Heartland (Toronto)
Plants And Animals – La La Land (Montréal)
Radio Radio – Belmundo Regal (Montréal)
Justin Rutledge – The Early Widows (Toronto)
The Sadies – Darker Circles (Toronto)
Shad – TSOL (London)
Elizabeth Shepherd – Heavy Falls The Night (Toronto)
The Slew – 100% (Montréal)
Meaghan Smith – The Cricket’s Orchestra (London)
South Rakkas Crew – The Stimulus Package (Toronto)
Tegan And Sara – Sainthood (Vancouver)
The Wooden Sky – If I Don’t Come Home You’ll Know I’m Gone (Toronto)
Hawksley Workman – Meat (Huntsville)
You Say Party! We Say Die! – XXXX (Vancouver)
Young Galaxy – Invisible Republic (Montréal)
Yukon Blonde – Yukon Blonde (Vancouver)
Zeus – Say Us (Toronto)

Now the 40-title Long List has been confirmed, jury members have the option to revise their ballots, but only with titles from the Long List. The top 10 of these selections become the Short List, which we will announce July 6.

And of course, you can catch Polaris nominees Dan Mangan, Hawksley Workman and Radio Radio in London on June 30th as part of Canadian Blast and The Local present “Canada”.

Photograph of Polaris Nominee Owen Pallett by Minh Lee