A Look at the Long List: 4. Braids – Native Speaker

Truth be told, as far as this ethereal, electronic-indie pop from Canada goes, I might have preferred Grimes‘ Halfaxa album but that inexplicably did not make the long list whilst this did but at the end of the day this ain’t too bad either. Reminded me of Cocteau Twins and back in the day Blue Bell Knoll was my sh-t so anyone evoking that spirit, even a little bit, is alright in my books.

‘Plath Heart’ (video):

Download Braids Plath Heart [MP3]

Download Braids Lemonade [MP3]

Download Braids Native Speaker [MP3]

A Look at the Long List: 3. Black Mountain – Wilderness Heart

This one just confused me. Whilst there was a bluesy thread running through most of the album, at times it was on some Black Crowes ish then at others I was getting a Soundgarden feel albeit with co-ed vocals instead of those tow group’s male lead vocal sound. The album was competent enough but ultimately I didn’t feel like there a lot of new ground being broken here and pushing the envelope of artistry and/or creativity kind of felt like it should be at the core of any album that was gonna be a serious contender to win the Polaris or at least be shortlisted from my point of view. Here’s a couple of the more notable tracks from Wilderness Heart album for you to check and see if I’m talking out my ass though:

‘The Hair Song’ (video):

Download Black Mountain The Hair Song [MP3]

‘Old Fangs (video):

A Look at the Long List: 2. Austra – Feel It Break

Austra‘s Feel It Break was was definitely one of the better albums on the Polaris long list with some really good songs on it here and there but as an overall body of work this wasn’t grabbing me. Here’s a couple of the highlights though from my perspective though:

Download Austra Shoot The Water [MP3]

Download Austra The Villain [MP3]

A Look at the Long List: 1. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

Aka my attempt to go through the entire Polaris Music Prize Long List and walk you through, Kitchen-style, my thoughts as a member of the jury panel on each album as I tried to figure out what i was gonna vote for last week. There’s forty albums on the list so I might be biting off more than I can chew here but I’ll make my best effort to see this self-imposed exercise all the way through. Plus I just can’t stomach trying to keep up with all the aggregator style blog and their d-ck riding clones out there any more (not that i have in a long while anyway). Doing this provides me with an opportunity to try something a little different and off the usual, beaten path here at The Kitchen but that’s still tied into how I view music. As an added bonus, I won’t divulge which albums I voted for in the posts and I’ll go through them in alphabetical order so at the end, maybe we’ll run a little contest to see if people can figure it out based on what I say. We’ll try and do a ticket or some kind of other swag giveaway that I’ll try and organize maybe tied into the Polaris as a prize for whomever gets closest (details still to be figured out). So anyway, here goes….

Not much to say on this one. You know the group. Even you deep hip-hop heads who don’t pay attention to naan else probably ended up hearing about this group when they took the Album of the Year Grammy in a surprise win earlier this year. Now I ain’t gonna lie and say I’ve f-cked with these dudes from the get but I did start to pay attention to them once it was evident their star was in ascendancy last year. I will say that the album had grown on me after repeated listens by time I came back to it in consideration for the Polaris. While they’ve already been well-feted and celebrated this past year, there’s no doubt this is the album to beat as far as the Polaris goes. Here’s a couple tracks for those of you who’ve still managed to not hear anything from The Suburbs:

[audio: http://dl.soundowl.com/14j9.mp3]
MP3: Arcade Fire – The Suburbs [stream only, no download]

[audio: http://dl.soundowl.com/14j4.mp3]
MP3: Arcade Fire – Rococo [stream only, no download]

[MP3] Arcade Fire – Suburbs (Alejandro Chal Remix) feat. Drake

From the homies at GFC-NY an interesting mash-up (?) of two of the biggest music industry success stories out of Canada in the past couple years:

“Here’s another remix courtesy of Alejandro Chal, which you may formally know as Precize. The song involves a blend of Arcade Fire‘s Suburbs and some verses from Drizzy. Not quite as breezy as the original version, but certainly a more lively version. Check it out and let us know what you think. FACELIFT VOL. 1 Coming Soon.”

MP3 Download: Suburbs (Alejandro Chal Remix) by Alejandro Chal

I digs a lot. What about y’all??