The Polaris Music Prize Short List will be revealed on Tuesday, July 16. The playlist today has a couple tracks each for 10 artists that I am hoping will be on that list. I was 0/5 on my ballot for the Long List, so here’s hoping some of my picks make it this time around.

I had a lot of listening to do and it was very difficult to narrow the 40 on the Long List down to my 10 for the Short List. There was only a couple albums that I was sure I was voting for but there were 10 to 15 more that I was considering.

Shad’s A Short Story About a War was an album I feel strongly should be on the short list. It’s an album that stands out with the realities of injustice, greed and racism in the lyrics and great music and production to go with it. Alexandra Streliski’s INSCAPE is the other album I was certain about. It is a masterpiece. Moving instrumental piano music that I feel.

The rest I was not so certain on. There are a lot of great albums, I just wasn’t sure which great albums I was going to vote for. Maybe LAL’s Dark Beings, the Toronto based duo or Operator’s Radiant Dawn. Marie Davidson’s Working Class Woman and Jessie Reyez’s Being Human in Public are both very strong favourites of mine. Snotty Nose Rez Kid’s TRAPLINE won’t soon be forgotten. Then there is Fucked Up’s Dose Your Dreams, which found the band going in a new direction and it worked out very well. Or veterans Voivod and their prog/thrash metal album The Wake, that is superb. Or Pup’s Morbid Stuff punk rock album which is also a great album.

There were many more albums I considered. A few French albums really caught my ear and a few hip hop/r&b/urban ones did too. There were a few albums such as Tim Baker’s Forever Overhead and Dizzy’s Baby Teeth that I love but just didn’t quite get on my list for various reasons.

Here is my Short List playlist. Who is on your short list?