I Heart the Music: Your Online Source for Live Music Reviews and Interviews in Toronto!

We have ALL waited a long while for this to come out- 365 days to be exact! It has finally arrived: the Polaris Music Prize short list announcement! It seems that the jurors have followed the lead from last year and provided us with a healthy list that covers all genres and styles of music. We covered this last year and found that everyone was shocked by Fucked Up! taking home the cash prize. While we don’t know who will take home the grand prize of $20,000 this year, we do know that there is some amazing talent to choose from.

Without fruther ado, iheartthemusic brings to you the 2010 Polaris Music Prize shortlist:

The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night

Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record

Caribou – Swim

Karkwa - Les Chemins De Verre

Dan Mangan – Nice, Nice, Very Nice

Owen Pallett – Heartland

Radio Radio – Belmundo Regal

The Sadies – Darker Circles

Shad – TSOL

Tegan and Sara – Sainthood

What are your thoughts on this year’s list?

Canadian Music Week is probably one of my favourite times of the year and as such, I wanted to make sure that those of you that were not able to see everything could digest some of the shots we took while there. So here are some AMAZING shots from CMW 2010:

Ah, the Constantines. This was one of those performances that was incredible to see so close. I was stuck right in the photography pit for their entire set and got to just sit back and enjoy while my photographer, Mike Palmer, took the creative reigns. We caught bassist Dallas Wehrle do this and then play behind his back. UNREAL!

Great Lake Swimmers are SO talented however, their sound just didn’t fit the upbeat nature of the event.

Plants and Animals: stole the night!

The first time I saw The Rural Alberta Advantage play live was in the basement of a trashy film store. My, my how times have changed! This group even picked up an award that night. They rocked it!

So once again Canadian Music Week, or Canadian Music Fest rather, has hit the streets (and venues) of Toronto. With so many acts to see we here at iheartthemusic figured we would make it easier for you by showcasing one artist in particular who caught our eye. For our CMW preview meet The Schomberg Fair:

iheartthemusic: Welcome guys! You are somewhat veterans now since you have produced a few albums, however inbetween your last album and your recent one, Gospel, I believe it was about a year and half time. That seems fairly quick?

Matt: The difference between the last record and this record was that I would come in with a song and it would come out pretty close after that. Now we have been working with the arrangement a bit more and Nate and Pete have really come in to shape the sound quite a bit. I think that came from confidence and playing.  It is now a very collaborative process.

iheartthemusic: For this last album didn’t the lyrics and overall feel of the album really came from your own experiences Matt?

Matt: Yeah, so I am the lyricist and I do street outreach with the homeless.

iheartthemusic: That must be incredible and give you quite a bit of writing inspiration, which is kind of an awful thing to say given the circumstances.

Matt: [laughs] Well there is no shortage of material!

iheartthemusic: This album definitely has a darker, well I guess I wouldn’t say darker side but…

Pete: I would say darker! [laughs]

iheartthemusic: Which is so odd to say because if I watch any YouTube clips of you, the energy is so uplifting! It is like a disconnect but in a really great way.

Nathan: I mean that is the kind of energy that we want to bring to the stage. Matt and I talked about it when we were naming the album because we weren’t sure about the name Gospel and the religious connotations behind that.

iheartthemusic: I didn’t even think of that!

Nathan: Yeah, we aren’t a Christian rock band or anything like that. We wouldn’t say we weren’t gospel music by any stretch of the imagination, but the true meaning of the word gospel is the good news and I mean that really shows in our live show because you know the message, the actual literal meaning, is not a positive thing but we are delivering it in a way that is fun and uplifting. We are kind of saying that in spite of bad things we are going to have a good time. You push through the tough times and have great times.

Peter: We have always said that the overall message is one of hope and I think that no matter where it [your material] comes from, whether it’s a dark place or a light place, at the end of the day when people pay money and see you live you put on a show. That definitely is in the back of our minds.

Matt: Hope and the idea of a future. The work that I do is trying to achieve that same goal for those people: to help them find hope.

iheartthemusic: Is it then an outlet for you?

Matt: I would drink a lot more if I didn’t write songs. It’s a pretty challenging job, I mean it’s rewarding but emotionally draining. The band is emotionally uplifting. I love playing music and I love playing music with these guys.

iheartthemusic: Is there a big difference for you, in terms of enjoyment, between the live show and recording?

Matt: They are very different beasts. [laughs]

Nathan: Every time that we go into recording we’ve had this idea that we are going to make a studio record, and then the engineers are always like “we are going to make this a real live sounding album”. They try to make it so that that same energy from our live show is transferred to the record, and I think they succeeded on this one. It’s definitely a different animal and we’re a lot more nervous when we go into the recording studio.

Peter: I think that with a live show, we are really used to playing live and we feed off the audience, so a recording studio is a very dry and can be stale because it is dead silence and we all went in with that feeling. So I think that’s why we feel recording is a little more challenging than live shows. I think we are getting a lot better.

Matt: I really enjoy both a lot. They are different beasts, if you played several hundred shows you would probably be pretty good at the live shows than only putting out two records right? [laughs]

iheartthemusic: Absolutely!

Matt: We were really lucky to work with the guys at Chemical Sound, Dean and Jake, they  were just so great and really helped to bring out the best performance and stuff. Again it’s a new collaboration with the engineers than with let’s say the fans.

iheartthemusic: So what’s up next then?

Matt: The road. Keep playing Ontario for a while and then go back and forth across Canada and the States hopefully before the end of the year. I would like to try and get back in the studio before then end of the year. That’s the long term plan.

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