More awards, and the very first Polaris Music Prize was awarded in Toronto on Monday night. This, as previously reported, is something of a Canadian version of the Mercury Music Prize. The inaugural winner was Final Fantasy, or Owen Pallett to give him his real name, who won the $20,000 prize and, one would hope, something of a boost in record sales (especially as he's promised to share the prize money with members of his Toronto-based collective, the Blocks Recording Club).
On winning the prize Pallett commented: "I always feel like Canadian critics, especially, have for a long time, been hesitant to get behind something and say, hey this is really great. It's just part of the Canadian mentality. I think the best thing about the Polaris prize is it's maybe going to set a precedent for people to actually get behind our artists."
As previously reported, other artists up for the prize included Metric, Wolf Parade, The New Pornographers and Broken Social Scene.