Godspeed You! Black Emperor was awarded the 2013 Polaris Prize for the best full-length Canadian music album, for its 2012 release "Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!"
"Ascend" is Godspeed You's fourth studio album, and first in more than 10 years. The band has maintained renown for its experimental "post-rock," although "Ascend" was its first album to place in the charts.
The Polaris Prize, an award loosely modeled after the U.K.'s Mercury Prize, has been awarded since 2006 to Canadian artists including the Arcade Fire and Feist, and has included a $30,000 prize since 2011. The award is decided upon by a panel of Canadian music journalists.
The Montreal-based band was not there to accept its award, but a representative from the group's label, Constellation Records, accepted the prize and stated that the band would use the monetary portion to fund music education programs and buy instruments for the Quebec penal system. The band itself is set to begin touring with Nine Inch Nails in the United States on September 28 in St. Paul, MN.
The "short list" for this year's Polaris Prize included a total of ten artists. The additional nine nominees are below:
Zaki Ibrahim, "Every Opposite"
Metric, "Synthetica"
METZ, "METZ"
Purity Ring, "Shrines"
Colin Stetson, "New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light"
Tegan and Sara, "Heartthrob"
A Tribe Called Red, "Nation II Nation"
Whitehorse, "The Fate of The World Depends on This Kiss"
Young Galaxy, "Ultramarine"
Metric, Colin Stetson, and Tegan and Sara have all been nominated before, unsuccessfully. "Synthetica" was Metric's third nomination without a win.
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