Impeccably performed and recorded, and yet such a deliberate and self-conscious homage to ’70s stoner rock that I couldn’t bring myself to take entirely seriously. I don’t want to trot out the i-word (irony) but I can’t bring myself to believe that the band didn’t break out laughing hysterically at least once during recording. I wouldn’t have been disappointed if this one won, but it would have to do it without my help.

MP3: Black Mountain – “Tyrants”
Video: Black Mountain – “Wucan”

I know most everyone expected I’d go to the mat for this album and yes, it was a favourite of 2007 and I’m obviously a big fan of Ms Bulat. But while I think that it’s a remarkable debut and it pushes all my buttons, it’s also true that it has its less remarkable moments and as a whole, doesn’t deliver all the potential that Basia has. She’s got more and better albums in her yet, and I doubt this will be her last visit to the Polaris short list. Still, though, it made a last minute rally and moved up a couple spots on my final ballot.

MP3: Basia Bulat – “In The Night”
Video: Basia Bulat – “The Pilgriming Vine”
Video: Basia Bulat – “In The Night”

Honestly, I had hardly listened to Andorra prior to being named to the Polaris Grand Jury. Dan Snaith’s previous records hadn’t done much for me and the cursory listens I’d given this one were equally intriguing and unsettling for reasons I couldn’t articulate, so I didn’t go back to it. And then I did. And again. And again. This, and to a lesser extent the Shad record, were the new discoveries that basically set the bar for what the best Canadian album of the year should elicit in terms of an emotional and cerebral response. Too classically pop to be regarded as an electronic album and too electronic to be regarded as a classic pop record, Andorra feels like its been orphaned by its parent genres and has instead started its own. It’s the android Beach Boys singing Gregorian chants in outer space. Timeless yet modern, comforting yet creepy, with each listen it revealed something new to me and also, each time, cemented its place at the top of my list.

MP3: Caribou – “Melody Day”
Video: Caribou – “Melody Day”
Video: Caribou – “She’s The One”
Video: Caribou – “Irene”

You’d think that familiarity would be an advantage in these things, but in the case of three of the nominees whose careers I’ve essentially followed since the beginning, this wasn’t the case. In Kathleen Edwards’ case, the fact that Asking For Flowers felt like boilerplate Kathleen Edwards was a definite strike against her. I didn’t think it stood out even from her own catalog, let alone the rest of the short list. In fact, whenever I tried to recall who was on the short list, this would be the last album I remembered. That said, with some of the cases made for it over the Polaris process will encourage me to revisit it and maybe give it another chance.

Video: Kathleen Edwards – “The Cheapest Key”
Video: Kathleen Edwards – “I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory”

I would be perfectly happy to put LP on at a party and let it ride, as it’s thoroughly enjoyable as both something to listen to and something to soundtrack other activities. It’s grown on me a lot and given more than a couple months to spend with it, it might have gotten more traction in my mind but considering the fact that I’m a lyrics and themes kind of guy (look back at my top albums of the year for the past however many years – all dense and wordy mofos), Holy Fuck probably never had a real chance with me.

MP3: Holy Fuck – “Lovely Allen”
Video: Holy Fuck – “Lovely Allen”
Video: Holy Fuck – “Milkshake”

I know I’ll take grief for this from lots of people, but this was a record that – even pre-Polaris – began gaining more ill will from me with each listen. I can’t even explain why. The band are obviously tremendous musicians and there’s truly prodigious talent on display, but it feel like an over-long hippie jam that lacks real substance. It just didn’t speak to me at all. Of all the Polaris noms, this was the album I dreaded putting on the most because I knew that I’d like it even less than the last time I made myself listen to it. And I know of at least a half-dozen people who now hate me for this.

It would seem that an artist’s best chance at winning the Polaris is to have me not hear the record. How else to explain how the two short list records that I heard the least (or not at all) before entering the judging phase would end up at or near the top of my list? As I’ve said countless times before by way of disclaimer, I don’t listen to hip-hop. But I don’t dislike it – I enjoy it live and like to think that I can recognize good hip-hop when I hear it. Like the best music of any genre, you shouldn’t need a lot of background for it to reach you. And the first time I listened to The Old Prince, my initial reaction was “I like this” and “this guy is good”. But I admit I needed verification from more hip-hop-savvy acquaintances that this guy, indeed, had the goods and that he wasn’t just the best I’d heard from my sample group of one. This record picked up more and more good will with each listen, and, of course, there was the video.

MP3: Shad – “I Don’t Like To”
Video: Shad – “The Old Prince Still Lives At Home”
Video: Shad – “I Don’t Like To”

We weren’t supposed to compare any of the nominated records against the rest of the artist’s oeuvre but that’s really difficult to do, especially when your initial emotional response to said album was disappointment because it didn’t measure up to its predecessors. Case in point, Stars – though Bedroom contains a handful of the band’s very best songs ever, the album as a whole felt overlong and too much of a retread of themes and styles already well-covered on Set Yourself On Fire. It didn’t display much in the way of artistic growth and it feels like the Stars recipe is starting to get a little stale.

MP3: Stars – “The Night Starts Here”
Video: Stars – “The Night Stars Here”
Video: Stars – “Bitches In Tokyo”
Video: Stars – “Take Me To The Riot”

Little Jabs is a textbook example of superb, Summer-y power pop but that’s a genre that’s traditionally had trouble being taken seriously, rightly or wrongly. It’s easy to do it to a mediocre level, but to do it in an outstanding way – as Two Hours Traffic do – is incredibly hard and definitely worthy of note. The album’s catchy as hell and there’s no other album on the list that I’d rather have playing if I were on a road trip somewhere, but it just felt a bit too slight to stand up against the other nominees and take the prize.

MP3: Two Hours Traffic – “Stuck For The Summer”
Video: Two Hours Traffic – “Nighthawks”
Video: Two Hours Traffic – “Stuck For The Summer”
Video: Two Hours Traffic – “Jezebel”

My comments on the Stars record also apply here, though the merits of Reunion Tour have grown on me more in the last few weeks. Samson is a devastatingly good poet/songwriter, but his choice of subject matter this time out felt a little too “sponsored by CBC”, too deliberately Canadiana, to win me over. And like the Stars record, it felt very much like it was covering the same ground as its predecessor in Reconstruction Site but less successfully so. And I much preferred the cat song on that one to the cat song on this one.

MP3: The Weakerthans – “Sun In An Empty Room”
MP3: The Weakerthans – “Night Windows”
Video: The Weakerthans – “Civil Twilight”