There was an undeniable sense of relief in music snob circles when it was announced last night that Toronto hardcore heroes Fucked Up had won the $20 000 2009 Polaris Music Prize for their album The Chemistry of Common Life.
Leading up to the gala award show, there had been much griping about how musically conservative the short list was.
After all, aside from K’Naan and Fucked Up, the rest of the acts are fairly straightforward pop/rock bands, and there was a fear that the final jury might pick one of the safer choices, giving credibility to the claim that Canada isn’t ready to celebrate and reward our edgier artists.
At the same time, they were hardly underdogs.
While all the contenders were strong musically, Fucked Up are easily the act making the most noise on a global level.
Should a Canadian music prize care what the rest of the world thinks? Well, if this is supposed to be an award based on critical success rather than financial, it should be going to the band that’s arguably changing perceptions of music worldwide, rather than just playing good songs.
Fucked Up have forced the music industry to wake up and pay attention to punk rock again, and have single-handedly lent credibility to a genre generally ignored by the establishment. As delightful and ambitious as Joel Plaskett’s triple album was, he can’t claim the same cultural impact as they can.
As far as the actual award show went, it was as awkward and cheeseball as you might imagine. Most of the acts seemed bewildered when presented with their limited edition framed prints and asked who they’d like to thank – the highlight being Chad VanGaalen’s wonderfully weird response, which somehow ended up rambling about micro-biology.
Fucked Up’s live performance was fairly tame by their standards – nothing was broken, no one bled, and MTV was given no reason to regret temporarily lifting their ban on the band. They beefed up their line-up with guest vocals from Lullabye Arkestra and violin from past Polaris winner Owen Pallett, but aside from Damian Abraham stripping down to his underwear, there wasn’t much for the omnipresent security guards to worry about.
Well, there was a brief moment of excitement when a spontaneous food fight broke out right before the winner was announced, but most witnesses are blaming that on the Malajube camp.
Following the ceremony there was a glimmer of scandal due to Metric’s ill-advised sarcastic twitter response – “Wow, Pop-Core takes the Polaris prize! Surprise!” This was quickly dubbed the Kanye West moment of the awards, and should embarrass them for the next week or so. Fucked Up took down a bunch of other Twitter reactions on their own blog.
As for what they would do with their newfound financial windfall, Fucked Up announced that they would be using the prize money to record a benefit for the estimated 500 missing aboriginal women in Canada. That news quickly shut up the critics whining about their favourite gentle roots rock album getting passed over.
And on the topic of politics, many folks at the after-party were commenting on how this win is a welcome “fuck you” to Stephen Harper over his government’s continued assault on arts funding, as well as for calling out previous Polaris nominees Holy Fuck as an act not deserving of funding (presumably due to their Walmart-unfriendly name).
The only problem Fucked Up are going to face coming out of this is that it will be harder for them to claim outsider status anymore, which isn’t really such a bad position to be in.[rssbreak]
