Connecting the dots to explain Angine de Poitrine’s Polaris Music Prize win

Connecting the dots to explain Angine de Poitrine’s Polaris Music Prize win BRAD WHEELER PUBLISHED 2 HOURS AGO Open this photo in gallery: Angine de Poitrine react to winning the Polaris Album Prize and the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize at Massey Hall in Toronto, on Tuesday. LAURA PROCTOR/THE CANADIAN PRESS COMMENTS SHARE SAVE FOR LATER Listen to this article Learn more about audio Log in or create a free account to listen to this article. On Tuesday, Quebec experimental rock duo Angine de Poitrine, after taking the indie-music world by storm this summer, won the $30,000 Polaris Music Prize for the album Vol. II. Not only that, they took home the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize for Fabienk, a six-minute angular funk workout that only Seinfeld’s Elaine Benes could dance to. The costumed pair posed for a picture with the idiosyncratic rocker Jack White backstage at Toronto’s RBC Amphitheatre in July. Chances are it is the only photo in existence where the strangers from Saguenay, Que., aren’t the weirdest people in the shot. The masked drum-and-guitar duo is anonymous, clad head-to-toe (literally) in polka dots. Claiming to be “space-time voyagers” with no interest in bloated arena-rock excesses, they say they make music for music’s sake, and that hoopla is for humanoids. As it’s put on their website: “Angine de Poitrine are simply thrilled to play rock ’n’ roll.” Why is Angine de Poitrine, Quebec’s masked, math-rock band, blowing up? Clearly, the thrill has been reciprocated. At a sold-out concert at Toronto’s Mod Club in July, the crowd pulsed as one to instrumental music that is asymmetrical, dissonant and improbably catchy and accessible. The guitarist − Khn de Poitrine, a pseudonym − uses looping pedals and plays a microtonal double-neck guitar. Extra frets allow for guitar lines that are foreign to people’s ears. Not everybody is buying it. “It’s microtonal, which means it’s out of tune,” legendary Canadian guitarist Frank Marino told The Montreal Gazette this summer. “If you take a pop band who wrote a lot of hits, like the Beatles or the Bee Gees, and if you take off their mop-tops or take off their hula hoops, you get rid of all the visuals, the songs are still the songs. But if you take these guys’ clothes off, there’s no song. There’s nothing to remember.” Open this photo in gallery: Angine de Poitrine fans react as the duo performs at the Polaris Music Prize Awards. LAURA PROCTOR/THE CANADIAN PRESS Pop-culture writer Chuck Klosterman’s new…