Polaris People For The Week Of October 19: Hannah Georgas + Holy Fuck, Sarah Harmer Wins, Feist Pop Ups
We’re going to kick off this week’s column with a hearty congratulations to Future Of The Left. The band, which includes former members of Mclusky, just won the Welsh Music Prize for their album, The Plot Against Common Sense.
In other nominally commonwealth news, Polaris juror and Cult Montreal writer Lorraine Carpenter recently scored an interview with noted (sort of) Canada hater Stephen Patrick Morrissey.
For the record, that ban on performing in Canada still stands as long as there’s a seal hunt.
“Canada, I'm certain, will manage quite well without me,” he said.
Now, then, let’s check in with some of our people, the Polaris People. Here’s what some of them have been up to:
First year Short Lister Sarah Harmer has a lot to be happy about. The environmental advocate was part of a successful campaign to get a proposed quarry in the Niagara region stopped. As an encore, Harmer spoke out against the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline that would stretch across Alberta and through British Columbia.
Leslie Feist, the current reigning Polaris champ and fellow anti-quarry activist, has been busy making like Polkaroo lately. First, she showed up on stage with Peter Gabriel at the Witness humanitarian event, then she dropped in on Sloan’s Music Hall of Williamsburg set to perform “She Says What She Means.”
Congratulations are in order for 2012 Short Lister Drake who managed to earn his high school diploma. In a seemingly neverending stream of unrelated Drizzy news, Lil Wayne thinks his Aaliyah project is awesome, he just got a pile American Music Award nominations, and he’s on both Rick Ross’ Black Barmitzvah mixtape and the new A$AP Rocky song.
Hannah Georgas, a Long Lister in 2010, enlisted Graham Walsh from fellow 2010 Long List/2008 Short List act Holy Fuck to add some blippity bleep to her latest album. They also listened to Foals a lot.
In the fodder for casual argument department, Diffuser.fm has a list of the 10 best songs from once-Short Listed, twice-Long Listed act The New Pornographers. Contemplate its merits here.
That big CBC documentary thingee past Long & Short Lister Dan Mangan did called What Happens Next premiers nationally on CBC on Saturday @ noon EST / 9 a.m. PST.
There’s a lot going on with past Short & Long Listers Tegan And Sara. Let’s recap:
1) Photos with Rolling Stone.
2) Fake shotgun noises with MTV.
3) Obama endorsement with Huffington Post Music Canada.
4) Rad performances for Austin City Limits.
Plants And Animals, another past Short & Long List act, talked about how they recorded at that same place in France where Feist and Patrick Watson made records.
K’naan, a past double Short List nominee, has Bono, Keith Richards, Will.i.am, Nas and Nelly Furtado on his new album Country, God, or the Girl. He introduced Lars Von Trier to the MTV audience to try to explain the record.
And finally, in the interesting endorsements department, Kendall Jenner, best known as the “socialite, reality television star, television personality, model, and brand ambassador for Seventeen”/ half-sister to the Kardashian clan, has been blasting music from past Short & Long Lister The Weeknd and 2008 Long Lister City And Colour. This bodes well for Polaris People reality TV soundtrack placements.
