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Holy Fucking Fuck, That Fuck From Caribou Won the Fucking Polaris Prize
Oh, how we wanted Holy Fuck to win the 2008 Polaris Prize.
For a competition whose winner seems to be chosen on the basis of context as much as content—a year later, can anyone really argue that Patrick Watson’s album had more “artistic merit” than Feist’s?—it would have been perfect: here, after all, on the brink of a federal election, is a band recently and uncomfortably cited by the Conservative government as one good reason to cut arts funding, a band whose name is so unspeakable in the mainstream media that even CBC Radio’s liveblog from last night calls them only “Holy F**k” or the significantly more racy “Holy F*ck.” And, as NOW‘s Josh Errett put it yesterday, “where better to announce Holy Fuck as the winner than at an arts gala—the same type of gala the Conservatives are attacking in the media?”
It certainly seemed it was heading that way at last night’s exclusive (but not so exclusive that we couldn’t get in) gala at the Phoenix: it took all of two minutes for host Grant Lawrence to hurl a quick insult at Stephen Harper, joke that the PM would be furious if he could see how lavish the festivities were, then insist that the cost of the gala was “very cheap.” Presenters treated the word “fuck” in “Holy Fuck” as though it was a one-word catharsis inducer; it was uttered at least a few dozen times throughout the night, each time more emphatic than the last—though we’re not sure if any of those uses ever made it on the air on Sirius Radio or CBC Radio 3, where it was being broadcast, the audience was regularly reminded, live.
The night lurched through two-song sets by Basia Bulat, Two Hours Traffic, Kathleen Edwards, Black Mountain, Plants and Animals, Shad, and Holy Fuck; one-song pretaped exclusive performances from the bands that couldn’t do it live (Stars, the Weakerthans, and…Caribou); and more than enough technical difficulties, like when the Weakerthans’ video refused to play for a good few minutes, or when something that sounded a lot like a waterfall overtook Kathleen Edward’s set and she blamed it on the tech’s “shitty backline.” It didn’t help much that everyone in the room was made hyperaware of the fact of the concert’s broadcast: as a result, every minor issue seemed worse, more hectic, more awkward, and far more important.
In spite of the problems, though, the sets were mostly extraordinarily good, and the night was full of nice touches: each band, for instance, had a poster made for them by an artist from their home town (Basia Bulat’s was done by our own Roxanne Ignatius; Shad’s by our pal Jeremy Wilson from Popfuel). Plus, George Stroumboulopoulos was there, which made Black Mountain’s table pretty excited.
By the time that the eleven-person grand jury was out and Patrick Watson appeared via pretaped video to announce the winner and take one more shot at his pals in Besnard Lakes, who he said “sucked” in last year’s acceptance speech and who he jokingly announced as the winner of this year’s prize, the crowd—part media, part industry, part artists—seemed to be angling for Shad or Holy Fuck. But when Watson actually announced the winner as Caribou’s Andorra, no-one was more surprised than Dan Snaith himself; he told the crowd in his shocked acceptance speech that “if I seem completely overwhelmed it’s because I am.”
To be honest, we’re still wondering why he won. Maybe artistic merit or something?
Photos courtesy of CBC Radio 3/Trevor Weeks