#postlet

“Be sure to find a quite place to study.”

Yes, I know that this is an extremely easy mistake to make, but it really bothers me. 

The Polaris short list is only a few days away, and I have no idea who will win. The fact is that there are so many great albums this year. I'm not even making this up. Last year, not all of the shortlisters I felt entirely deserved their place there. And of the longlist entries that didn't make it, there were only perhaps another ten who were eligible as good enough.

But this year, almost every album is a credible entry. There is so much solid music, I am betting on the tastes of the judges to decide how things play out, more than on the merits of the individual albums.

Here's my prediction, which incidentally also functions as a guide to what to listen to:

Very Likely to be on the Short List:

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!

Mac DeMarco – 2

Purity Ring – Shrines

Colin Stetson – New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light

Could Very Well be on the Short List:

A Tribe Called Red – Nation II Nation

Alaclair Ensemble – Les maigres blancs d'Amérique du Noir

The Besnard Lakes – Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO

Daphni – JIAOLONG

Evening Hymns – Spectral Dusk

Hannah Georgas – Hannah Georgas

Chilly Gonzales – Solo Piano II

Jim Guthrie – Takes Time

Hayden – Us Alone

Kid Koala – 12 bit Blues

Kobo Town – Jumbie in the Jukebox

Lee Harvey Osmond – The Folk Sinner

Les soeurs Boulay – Le poids des confettis

Corb Lund – Cabin Fever

The Luyas – Animator

Majical Cloudz – Impersonator

Metric – Synthetica

METZ – METZ

AC Newman – Shut Down The Streets

Old Man Luedecke – Tender is The Night

Lindi Ortega – Cigarettes & Truckstops

Peter Peter – Une version améliorée de la tristesse

Daniel Romano – Come Cry With Me

Tegan and Sara – Heartthrob

Young Galaxy – Ultramarine

Probably Not on the Short List:

ANCIIENTS – Heart of Oak

Louis-Jean Cormier – Le Treizième Étage

Zaki Ibrahim – Every Opposite

KEN mode – Entrench

Pierre Lapointe – Punkt

Albums I haven't heard yet:

Danny Michel with the Garifuna Collective – Black Birds Are Dancing Over Me

Rah Rah – The Poet's Dead

Rhye – Woman

Suuns – Images du futur

Al Tuck – Stranger at the Wake

Whitehorse – The Fate of the World Depends On This Kiss

 Real boring.

In fact, every smell is more powerful in springtime, as it starts to heat up. The whole world bequeaths a layering of scent on every byway, up and down every street - even concrete and plastic brings me pleasure, making me think of summers of years past.

Today the air is thick with the sense of rain. The humidity feels like the surface tension of a bubble being held against my skin. And rain has its own smell - a subtle and clean one.

My hopes are high for the chestnut trees. There is nothing as wonderful as a chestnut tree in a blossom. The flowers form columns, or spikes, white and flush against the full and purely green leaves of the tree. And every chestnut tree seems perfectly rounded, like a green cumulus cloud anchored on earth, and so very enormous. They also have a habit of shedding those prickly chestnuts, which make convenient missiles for friends and small children.

So I've written a bunch of little pieces about different female artists from around the world, all bunched together under the question of personae. A persona is a mask used in ancient Greek drama, but it has come to mean the entire character that a person performs in art. So every song lyric, every music video get-up, projects a different character, serves as a mask.