Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

The 2009 Polaris Music Prize finalists include some outstanding new talent.This year’s Short List nominees are: Elliott Brood – Mountain Meadows (Toronto, ON)Fucked Up – The Chemistry Of Common Life (Toronto, ON)Great Lake Swimmers – Lost Channels (Toronto, ON)Hey Rosetta! – Into Your Lungs (and around in your heart and on through your blood) (St. John’s, NF)K’naan – Troubadour (Toronto, ON)Malajube – Labyrinthes (Montréal, QC)Metric – Fantasies (Toronto, ON)Joel Plaskett – Three (Halifax, NS)Chad VanGaalen – Soft Airplane (Calgary, AB)Patrick Watson – Wooden Arms (Montréal, QC) I’m proud to be a Grand Jury member this year, along with these colleagues: Bryan Acker (Herohill)Stuart Derdeyn (...

Well excuuuse me! Who’d expect the original “wild and crazy guy” to be a sterling musician? But Martin, whose first album in 30 years is subtitled “New Songs for the Five-String Banjo,” dazzles with his instrumental bluegrass work. Although he features stellar guests like Dolly Parton, Earl Scruggs and Canadian actor Eugene Levy and voices one humorous number, “Late for School,” it’s Martin’s dexterous picking on original gems like “Tin Roof” and “Daddy Played the Banjo” that truly impresses. Not a novelty. July 2009

Andrew Penner sings with the fervor of a gospel devotee. Small wonder: the Sunparlour Players’ frontman sang in a church choir while growing up in a Mennonite farming community near Leamington, the Sunparlour district of southwestern Ontario that gives his roots-rock trio its name. With horns and a string quartet adding to its core instruments of guitar, banjo and kick drum, the group’s second CD has a rousing, Arcade Fire-like sound, especially on Penner’s Lake Erie anthem “Point Pelee is the Place to Be!” July 2009