The big job in the Risky Fuel household for the last month or so has been preparing the announcement of the 2021 Polaris Music Prize Long List.
This year Polaris got 40 past nominees and jurors to reveal the 40 albums that ended up making the 2021 Long List.
As an added bonus, multi-time nominee Cadence Weapon also performed as part of the video reveal event.
Watch it here:
Filed under Music, Shameless Promotion
International pop star Sia made a movie called Music that was, in theory, about autistic representation.
When Sarah reviewed the film for TIME her chief concerns where that the film could potentially be “patronizing, exploitive and genuinely harmful.” What she found out was that, in addition to arguably being many of those things, it was also simply bad art.
To read Sarah’s review go here.
Filed under Culture, Films, Health, Music, Shameless Promotion
Finally, my unique expertise has value to someone! I was recently asked to be on the Sloancast, a podcast dedicated to the band Sloan, to talk about said band and their inextricable link to the music magazine I used to manage, Chart Magazine.
Some of the topics we covered: how we’d pick the Chart Magazine cover stars, the three separate times we did the Top 50 Canadian Albums Of All Time poll, and what members of Sloan are like as hockey players.
It’s quite a romp if you care about 1990s Canadian rock music and or Sloan, specifically.
Listen to it by going here.
Filed under Concerts, Music, Recollections, Shameless Promotion
Pop culture has been particularly uneven when it comes to fair and credible autistic representation.
So it was with a healthy dose of cautious concern that Sarah was tasked with reviewing the new Netflix dating series Love On The Spectrum, featuring autistic people navigating dating, sex, romance and relationships.
The verdict? The autistic representation on Love On The Spectrum is probably better than most previous examples in television and film. But don’t treat that as a ringing endorsement. It’s a low bar to leap.
To read the review head over to TIME by going here.
Filed under Health, Shameless Promotion, Television
If you told me in January that a rap metal record would win the 2020 Polaris Music Prize I’d have fallen onto a fainting couch in a swoon.
And yet here we are, Backxwash’s God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It album has indeed won this year’s Polaris and it’s entirely deserved.
We didn’t get to celebrate Backxwash’s victory at the traditional gala this year. Instead, the 10 Short List nominees were honoured with a series of commissioned short films.
It turns out making 10 short films in four months is a ridiculously bonkers thing to do. But we did it. And they turned out.
Filed under Films, Music, Shameless Promotion
I Overcame My Autism And All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder: A Memoir
Risky Fuel 