Polaris People For The Week Of April 26: Timber Timbre Tees & Grimes' Strong Statement
How about those Juno Awards last week in Regina (the city that rhymes with angina)?
If it felt like there was a wee bit more synergy between them and us than in the past it would probably be because bona fide Polaris People like Leonard Cohen, The Weeknd, Metric, Grimes, Drake, Rose Cousins, Elliott Brood and Louis-Jean Cormier (Karkwa) all went home with trophies.
But our favourite folks did more than just win awards this week. Let’s check in to find out what the Polaris People were up to:
Two-time Short Listers Broken Social Scene continue to be the busiest band that technically doesn’t exist. Brendan Canning recently interviewed Shuggie Otis for the National Post and a number of band members and associates contributed to an in-depth history of the Arts & Crafts label in fashion mag, Flare. Speaking of Arts & Crafts and fashion, for $75 you can get yourself a t-shirt designed by BSS, Dan Mangan, Feist or Timber Timbre at The Bay.
Have you read Grimes‘ Jerry Maguire blog post yet? If you haven’t, you should. Claire, you can rest assured we’ll never refer to you in terms like “cute” and “waif.” That’s because we’ve got an endless store of sci fi/fantasy references we can drop instead… Bene Gesserit witch. Also, check out this excellent six degrees of Grimes.
Former champs Arcade Fire continue to be in the news. Win Butler is making the obligatory transition into scoring by working on a short film called Home Burial based on a Robert Frost poem. That, and the band are doing their part to help a neighborhood Montreal flower shop that’s down on its luck.
Tamey has filled our homes with flowers for years and is well loved in our neighbourhood. Let’s help her out! gofundme.com/tamey
— Arcade Fire (@arcadefire) April 24, 2013
“In this day and age, everything’s click this and little Twitter messages here and one sentence there, but if we can grab a few people and get them to lose themselves for 45 minutes and get them to relax, we’ve totally done our job,” Jace Lasek of The Besnard Lakes with words to live by.
Tegan And Sara charmed at the KROQ pre-Coachella house party (I don’t know what that means and I won’t respond to it). And now they’ve got a new video out for “I Was A Fool.”
John K. Samson of 2008 Short Listers the Weakerthans is officially a page-turner now. To find out what that means (it’s sort of like being a member of the Stonecutters except not at all like that) go here.
In concert news for those of discerning taste, the Hillside Festival lineup has been announced and it features a number of familiar names like former champs Fucked Up, past Short Listers The Sadies and recent Polaris Picks Hayden and Daniel Romano.
Colin Stetson, saxophonist-at-large to the Polaris community, and video game-y genre-obliterating rockers YAMANKAKA // SONIC TITAN will be teaming up to co-headline at the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival in June.
Then there’s this Governors Ball thing featuring Feist, Crystal Castles, Fucked Up and Japandroids that’s happening in June in New York. Apparently Fucked Up, Death From Above 1979 and Japandroids have been enlisted for the after-parties as well.
Finally, Polaris juror Grant Lawrence has been tapped to host the Lieutenant Governor’s BC Book Prizes Gala on May 4. We’re not sure the book prize people know what they’ve got themselves into.