My second Polaris Music Prize ballot was due at the end of last week. Normally I would post my ballot in full, but four of my five first round choices made the long list (which I covered for Exclaim!), so it seems a little redundant to list the entire thing.
My numbers one through four are the same as last time (Destroyer, PS I Love You, Dirty Beaches, Diamond Rings, in that order), so I'm just going to round out my list with this:
5. Miracle Fortress - Was I the Wave?
The ambient pieces are suitably atmospheric, but it's the pop songs and dance beats that really make songwriter Graham Van Pelt's electro tune. Highlights include the bass-driven "Tracers" and the '80s-inflected "Spectre." Listen to the dreamy guitar-driven cut "Miscalculations" below.

 

Just like last year, I waited until the very last day to submit my Polaris Music Prize ballot. This year had two albums that stood out as shoo-ins and a slew more that were strong contenders for my list. I imagine that I'll have a chance to vote for one or two of those near-misses in the next round, so stay tuned for my second ballot in a few weeks from now.
1. Destroyer - Kaputt
He's already put out eight previous LPs and a smattering of smaller releases and collaborations, but Kaputt just might be Dan Bejar's best work yet. It's a masterpiece in kitsch, with new age-tinged synths and soft rock horns that manage to sound charmingly hokey and completely gorgeous. Below is the poppy opener "Chinatown"
2. PS I Love You - Meet Me at the Muster Station
Screaming distortion. Yelping vocals. Thundering drums. Primal aggression. Shred solos. Talkbox. I've written about how much I love this album way too many times for me to have much new to write, so let me just reiterate how completely badass this debut LP is. Don't believe me? "Facelove" is below.
3. Dirty Beaches - Badlands
Style over substance? Possibly. But Alex Zhang Hungtai has a hell of a lot of style, so he still manages to pull of this scuzzy, ultra lo-fi take on retro blues and no-wave experimentation. There are also striking ballads like "Lord Knows Best" (below) and "True Blue."
4. Diamond Rings - Special Affections
John O'Regan's first album as Diamond Rings has three of the best singles of the year: "Wait & See" (below), "Something Else," and "All Yr Songs." And while the deep cuts aren't quite a enduring as those singles, there's no denying that this album completely owned my iPod back in the fall.
5. No Gold - No Gold
The Vancouver trio's first LP was a long time in the making, but this eight-song collection definitely doesn't disappoint. Krautrock influences mingle with tropical guitars and ambient soundscapes to make for a chilled-out summer album that's perfect for hot, lazy afternoons. Chill out with "Rainforts" below.

 

My second ballot for the Polaris Music Prize is due tonight at midnight. Three of my five picks from the first ballot made it through to the Long List, so I only needed to choose two more albums. This time around I've got some more Vancouver love and more high-production pop.
I've already explained the first three, so I'll keep those brief. Okay, enough preamble? Let's get onto the good stuff.
1. Apollo Ghosts - Mount Benson
As I touched on last week in a tour announcement story for Exclaim!, it's amazing that a label-less cult band like Apollo Ghosts can make it through to the second round of the Polaris Prize. That, I think, says everything about how effective this process is.
MP3: "Coka-Cola Admen"
2. Holy Fuck - Latin
This album seems to have flown under the radar, so I'm happy that it made it to the Long List. The more I listen to it, the more I love the blend of blissful synths and aggressive dance rock madness.
MP3: "Latin America"
3. The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night
Of all of my first ballot picks, this was the only one that I was sure would make it. The Besnard Lakes have been Short Listed before, and here's betting that they do it again. They probably don't need my help in doing it, but I'm trying not to be strategic about this.
MP3: "Albatross"
4. You Say Party! We Say Die! - XXXX
As I recently wrote about for Exclaim!, the band is now known simply as You Say Party following the tragic passing of drummer Devon Clifford. The band's final album under the old moniker is a gorgeous, new wave-y rumination on loneliness with love as its constant, guiding muse. (I made that sound pretentious. It's great, you guys!)
MP3: "Laura Palmer's Prom"
5. Dan Mangan - Nice, Nice, Very Nice
Not too long ago, Dan put on one of the best local shows I've ever seen. That isn't a factor for Polaris, but still—it was so fucking good. This husky-voiced Vancouverite is a hometown hero; if he can make it onto the Short List, he'll officially be a Canadian hero. And with Arts & Crafts releasing Nice, Nice, Very Nice in the US later this summer, who knows what's next. Cue up the title-related puns.
MP3: "Robots"
 

My first ballot for the Polaris Music Prize is due today. After much deliberation, here are the five albums I'm going with.
This list covers a fairly wide cross-section of Canadian music. Four provinces are represented. I've got fuzz pop, folk, jangle punk and dance music. There are albums that sound like they were crafted painstakingly in the studio and albums that sound like shit. That's Canada for you, I guess.
1. Little Girls - Concepts
Many DIY musicians have cranked the fuzz and reverb on their laptop recordings over the past couple of years, but no one has managed to make it sound creepier than Toronto's Josh McIntyre, aka Little Girls. His gothic surf jams aren't instrumentals, but the buried, distorted vocals mean that they might as well be.
MP3: "Youth Tunes"
2. Apollo Ghosts - Mount Benson
The word "funnest" isn't actually a word, but in the context of Apollo Ghosts, it is. This album is the funnest. The band is still relatively unknown outside of Vancouver, so I can't imagine that this album will make it onto the long list, but it's not for lack of talent. Tour, you guys! You could be huge!
MP3: "Things You Go Through"
3. Holy Fuck - Latin
Sonically, this album is fantastic. It's got thundering fuzz bass and bludgeoning beats (see: "SHT MTN" or "P.I.G.S."), but there's also real beauty and texture—just listen to the synth lines in "Stilettos" or the piano chords in "Latin America."
MP3: "Latin America"
4. Daniel, Fred & Julie - Daniel, Fred & Julie
Authenticity is the name of the game here. Cars drive past, children yell, fingers scrape against strings and guitars fall ever so slightly out of tune as Daniel Romano, Fred Squire and Julie Doiron harmonize beautifully on a selection of traditional folk songs. Initially, I didn't think an album made up mostly of covers would be a Polaris contender. I was wrong.
MP3: "The Gambler and His Bride"
5. The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night
The Besnard Lakes were the dark horse (LOL) of my list. My number five spot changed many times over the past few weeks, but this was an album that I kept coming back to. There are plenty of shoegaze and prog influences here, but it's the glimmers of '90s rock that always seem to catch my ear. Can't you just imagine Alice in Chains singing the hook from "Like the Ocean, Like the Innocent Pt. 2: The Innocent"?
MP3: "Albatross"
 

As promised, the year-end madness continues with my top ten albums of 2009. In the next couple days, I'll be writing about a change of format here at Chipped Hip. In the mean time, here's what rocked my stereo/laptop/iPod over the past year.
Japandroids got all of the glory, but there were lots of great albums released this year in Vancouver. And although only three managed to make the top ten cut, there are plenty of other amazing releases that were highlights of the last twelve months (Prairie Cat, Lightning Dust, Dan Mangan, the Zolas, etc.).
10. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
Sprawling chaos, with distorted drums competing for space with barbed guitars and spiky keyboards. The album could have fit onto a single CD, but by spreading it over two, the Flaming Lips show that there's a method to the mayhem.

8. Atlas Sound - Logos
Logos has all of Bradford Cox's usual tricks: swirling guitar fuzz, looping synth ambience and echoed, alien vocals. But this time around, there's enough straightforward songwriting to remind us that, behind the atmospherics, he's just another dude with a guitar.

8. Matt & Kim - Grand
As well as referring to a street in Manhattan, the title acknowledges the album's lush production and weighty arrangements. Of course, with Matt & Kim, such terms are all relative, since they still sound like a couple of kids thrashing away in their living room.

7. Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love
Stephen McBean has a reputation as Vancouver's preeminent Sabbath-loving riffmonger, but Outside Love favours acoustic guitars and baroque strings over bombastic hard rock workouts. It turns out that he's just as good at chamber folk as he is at '70s rock.

6. Hastings Sunrise - Hastings Sunrise
A 27-minute sugar rush that sounds like it was written on the spot, without rehearsals or second takes. In the case of Apollo Ghosts, that's a compliment. Slapdash brilliance and buoyant energy made this one of the most instantly likeable albums of the year.

5. Little Girls - Concepts
In a year of reverb-heavy, lo-fi fuzz pop, Concepts is the grimiest of the lot. Distortion reduces the vocals to a distant, robotic moan while guitars crash against tinny drum loops. And yet, the whole mess sounds completely beautiful.

4. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Once a cult band enjoyed almost exclusively by bloggers and record store employees, Merriweather turned Animal Collective into the everyman's indie band. And it's not hard to see why, with its plentiful hooks and universal themes of love and domesticity.

3. Said the Whale - Islands Disappear
A boat whirs as Islands Disappear kicks off with a gentle tour ballad followed by a rocker with shouted group vocals. Half an hour later, it's bookended with more group vocals and another tour ballad. The year's most symmetrical album then ends with the whirring of a boat.

2. Hollerado - Record in a Bag
Now we can all stop complaining about how Weezer has gone to shit, since Hollerado has taken up the power pop torch, delivering timeless hooks with party rock gusto. The bad news is that, if the comparison holds, Hollerado is going to suck in fifteen years.

1. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
The grit of the Jesus and Mary Chain. The big-hearted wit of Belle & Sebastian. The soporific sheen of My Bloody Valentine. And the pop quirks of a legion of obscure cult icons (the Pastels, Rocketship, etc.). With songwriting this good, no style ever sounds played out.
 

2009 is the year everyone ran out of adjectives to describe fuzzy, reverb-soaked pop. To compensate, we started describing it using a bunch of obscure sub-genres—glo-fi, shitgaze, chillwave, hypnagogic pop—and tried to ignore the fact that two years ago, we would have probably called it all "dream pop." But who cares? I was a sucker for it as much as anyone, and many of the years best releases fell under the dream pop umbrella.
I'll be changing the format of Chipped Hip in the new year, which will allow me to offer more downloads as well as update a little more frequently. But just to wipe the slate clean for this past year, here are my top ten songs of 2009. My top ten albums will follow tomorrow. Interestingly, the two lists are fairly different, as some of the top songs came from albums that I didn't otherwise care for.
10. Washed Out - "Feel It All Around"
With sighing harmonies and woozy synth bliss, "Feel It All Around" is the sonic equivalent to a slow motion montage (or, as I previously wrote, a Polaroid picture). If you know of a song that better evokes hazy summer nostalgia than this, I'd like to hear it.

9. Matt & Kim - "Lessons Learned"
Matt & Kim scale back the usual piano punk madness for a delicate, textured song that could be a ballad if only the drums weren't moving in double time. The centrepiece of Grand, its droning synths and layered vocals sound positively, er, grand.

8. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - "Young Adult Friction"
It turns out that this Brooklyn outfit is just as good at jangle pop as it is at fuzz rock. "Young Adult Friction" is a punny '80s throwback that's the second best library-based love song of 2009 (spoiler alert!).

7. Atlas Sound - "Quick Canal"
Stereolab's Lætitia Sadier offers sublime, echoing vocals to this dreamy nine-minute electro vamp. I still can't tell if she's singing "wisdom is love" or "wisdom is learned," but either way, it sounds like a revelation.

6. Hannah Georgas - "The National"
I find the National fucking boring, but this song is folk pop at its most affecting. Over a plucking banjo and barely-there harmonies, Georgas reminisces about a defunct relationship, half-hoping and half-fearing that she'll run into him at a National concert.

5. Girls - "Hellhole Ratrace"
The song that plays after the lights have been turned on and everyone's gone home, while the bartender stacks chairs and mops up beer. Mopey self-pity gives way to sublime euphoria, repeating on and on into infinity (okay, actually for about seven minutes).

4. Said the Whale - "Camilo (The Magician)"
Between the version that appeared on The Magician EP and the one from Islands Disappear a few months later, I listened to "Camilo" more than any other song in 2009. And still I never tire of the grungy guitar riffs and stuttering chorus of this power pop gem.

3. God Help the Girl - "God Help the Girl"
This portrait of a reclusive romantic is so vivid that it provided songwriter Stuart Murdoch with the inspiration for an entire musical based on the same character. And although it describes a girl going into reclusion, witty lyrics mean that it's as funny as it is poignant.

2. Animal Collective - "My Girls"
My friend Colin invented a dance to this song, which involved lots of clapping and hopping from side to side. Now try imaging him doing that same dance to anything off Here Comes the Indian. That's how far this band has come.

1. Camera Obscura - "French Navy"
Swooning, orchestral soul pop with a timeless complaint: "I wanted to control it / But love, I couldn't hold it." But it's the details that really make it come alive—the "dusty library," the "dietary restriction"—and gives it the personal touch needed to become a breakup classic.