.... And the winner is....

The Polaris Music Prize, a "$20,000 prize for a full length Canadian album, judged solely on artistic merit without regard to genre or record sales" was announced a couple of weeks ago. The nominees included:

• The Arcade Fire "Neon Bible"
• The Besnard Lakes "The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse"
• The Dears "Gang of Losers"
• Julie Doiron "Woke Myself Up"
• Feist "The Reminder"
• Junior Boys "So This Is Goodbye"
• Miracle Fortress "Five Roses"
• Joel Plaskett Emergency "Ashtray Rock"
• Chad VanGaalen "Skelliconnection"

After all the votes were tabulated, here is who won.

Now that's investigative journalism.

And while I'm not quite ready to say that Patrick... whateverhislastnameis ... shouldn't have won, The Besnard Lakes, Feist, Miracle Fortress and the Arcade Fire (even though it was a little bit of a let down - I probably had impossibly high expectations) all released outstanding albums.

Maybe this shouldn't be such a huge surprise since this guy beat out the likes of Broken Social Scene, The New Pornographers, Metric, Wolf Parade and Somalian/Canadian K'naan (who put out probably the most interesting hip-hop album in the last couple of years) in 2006.

On a side note, K'naan has a really interesting back story that is covered on his album 'The Dusty Foot Philospher' or here, if you don't like the rap music that the kids are so fond of these days.