Every week, a different FADER editor compiles a playlist to highlight a new release and give you a guide to that artist’s web of influences and peers. These Staff Selects live in our Spotify app, alongside GEN Fs from our archives and playlists for each issue. This week, Duncan Cooper compiles a fantasy shortlist for Canada's Polaris Prize.
The Polaris Prize will be awarded next Monday, September 23rd, to the year's best Canadian album, "selected solely on artistic merit without regard to genre, sales history or label affiliation." The shortlist includes LPs by Tegan and Sara, Purity Ring and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and as decent as those artists' recent records were, I feel like if I was handing out a novelty check for $30,000, I might give it to someone… else? Majical Cloudz. I'd give it to Majical Cloudz. Or at least I'd give a closer re-listen to one of the other Canadian acts we've been championing around FADER over the past year—Mac DeMarco, Mozart's Sister, Blue Hawaii, White Poppy, Dirty Beaches—or one that weirdly didn't make it on the site, like Diana and Black Atlass. In that spirit, here's a playlist of 20 Canadian artists with good albums that came out over the past year.
Staff Selects: The 2013 Bizarro Polaris Prize