Final Fantasy wins Polaris Prize

The Polaris Prize was announced this week, going to Final Fantasy - solo project of Ontarian Owen Pallet - and his album He Poos Clouds.

Like Magnetic Fields meets Andrew Bird, Final Fantasy brings witty lyrics together with a violin that is kicking against its own tradition. He has a good voice and sense of melody but more impressive is how his music is out of synch with most things except itself: like he was just born sounding this way and didn't have to practice his ass off for it.

For his troubles, Pallet is awarded $20,000, which he says he will share with his Blocks Recording Collective pals (and who could be more deserving than they?). Any of the finalists for this prize would have deserved winning it, but I must say my own bent toward solo artists makes me particularly chuffed about Final Fantasy taking home the prize.

Canadian Press article here.

Elliott Brood - Ambassador

Elliott Brood
Ambassador
Six Shooter, 2005

Ambassador’s outer sleeve looks like a wooden box, maybe meant to mimic a cigar box, or perhaps ammunition or something. The sleeve contains a reproduction of a train ticket from 1929 (one-way in coach, New York to Detroit, overnight), and includes album info on what looks like draughtsman velum. The effect (especially with the ticket) reminds me of the Who’s Live at Leeds. These are great details that downloading culture has made us forget that we love.

This album, like a good night of hard drinking, is a loose rambler, starting off with a determined momentum that slows over time, and fades into a melancholic trot as the album continues toward its conclusion. This is not to say that the album loses its purpose, but rather that like aging and arguing, things mellow with time. The album does the same, and it’s fitting.

Elliott Brood remind me of a cross between Luther Wright & The Wrongs and Pleased to Meet Me-era Replacements. There are raspy vocals and tweed-and-tube guitar licks over intricate banjo plucking, and a sense from the listener that the band has that tired-but-cool presence about them. Perhaps it’s endless touring. I’d suspect it’s the booze.

At points Ambassador flirts with being too straight for my tastes, sounding like a “rock album” in the way that the Black Crowes sounded like a “rock band”. But for the most part, with Ambassador, Elliott Brood have put together a solid record of indie-inspired alt-country, without being utterly cheerless or affected. It seems this is an album of deliberate intention, worth checking out.

Ammoncontact - With Voices

Ammoncontact
With Voices
Ninja Tune, 2006

This is a collaboration between Carlos Nino and Fabian Ammon, who I gather are pretty involved in the LA music scene. The album is dedicated to J. Dilla, which speaks to the production style Ammoncontact are into – MPCs and trap kits, dubby sounds and soulful vamps. The record could work as an instrumental, arguably better, but I guess that’s the whole point of the “with voices” angle. And I salute the ambitiousness of it.

There are some pretty heavy medium-fi players on this album, including Daedelus, and Cut Chemist, as well as jazz outsider greats like Yusef Lateef. The best tracks put down a groove with oblique loops over top: asymmetrical rhymes, lopsided guitar parts, slightly non-conventional melodies. Aspects remind me of some nameless acid jazz stuff that Josh Neelands and Anthony James Peckover gave me years ago.

It’s difficult for me to feel entirely comfortable with songs that rhyme about the sun, moon, and stars and love and life and all that (“Beautiful Flowers” for example), so I admit to a certain aversion at times. But these elements are hit and miss; some lyrics work really well, and given how ridiculous hip hop can get sometimes I can get behind lines that preach positivity rather than blind consumerist pleasuring. Titles like “Elevation”, “Drum Riders”, and “Earth’s Children” (one of the best by the way, with a really subtle sample and kit combo) create an ‘all weed and dimmed lights’ vibe - in the very best sense. It’s an album that given the right setting, you can submerge into its thrubby darkness.

On the whole, the production on With Voices is pretty unreal. Great balance and dynamics, and a good mix between digital and live percussive sound. Each track feels like a short trip across an ever-changing, glitchy landscape, rough with digital grit. Recommended, but lyrical parts may be too sunshiny for the unprepared.

Black Turtleneck - Musical Chairs

Black Turtleneck
Musical Chairs
Normals Welcome, 2006

There is a mincing seriousness to this album, which makes their name a wry puzzle. There seems to be an element of poking fun at the humourless chin-scratching electronic crowd, while the band also steps right into some of the stereotypes they are mocking. Perhaps they’re just acknowledging the preciousness in electronic music that often emerges when vocals are involved. A slightly English sounding vocal part here, a single line drenched in delay there, suddenly its 1985 and your hair hurts from the gel.

Black Turtleneck is a collaboration of Jason Amm (of Solvent) taking care of synthesizers and programming, and Thomas Sinclair, who handles programming and vocal duties. In some ways they are very similar to Solvent, in the furry, vintage-synth sounds, video game bleeps and nostalgic step-sequenced stuffs, but the vocals add a different element. The vocals meet somewhere between New Order and Depeche Mode, but can also sometimes steer toward the more interesting and irregular stylings of Tarwater. The Black Turtleneck aesthetic is decidedly retro, and done with skill—suitable for those nights when it’s just you, your leather bodysuit, sulkiness and a half-bottle of dry sherry. Technocracy! Remorse! Drizzle!

Finally, Musical Chairs is an album of infinitely danceable music without requiring the thumping quarter-note bass attack you hear from every passing Civic, and the melodies are quite catchy to boot.

But again, I can’t be certain about whether the album is in homage to the 80s, or stuck in them, and that uncertainty makes this album one that’s spun selectively. When I’m really in the mood, and my bodysuit looks particularly maudlin without me.