Best of What's Next 2009: Patrick Watson [Musician]

Hometown: Montreal

Ethereal, creepy, gorgeous, revolutionary—Patrick Watson’s music is all of these things, often simultaneously. The Canadian artist grew up singing in church choirs in Montreal, and studied classical and jazz piano performance, arrangement and composition before he and his band released their 2003 debut. But it was 2006’s follow-up Close to Paradise—which won Canada’s Polaris prize that year, beating odds-on favorites Arcade Fire—that gained the band its first major accolades. Watson has since performed with everyone from Steve Reich and Philip Glass to Feist, and his adventurous new album Wooden Arms finds him shedding his musical flesh once more. As Watson sings on opening track “Fireweed,” “We dug ourselves a hole, and planted all our skin / Like a seed in the ground, to grow again.”  

What’s Next? “I don’t know what’s next for me as an artist,” Watson says, “but I just received a huge box at my door that looks like a prop in an Indiana Jones movie, [and it’s] filled with Balinese gamelan instruments I ordered. That should keep me busy for the afternoon.”

Listen to Patrick Watson's "Man Like You" on the PasteStation.

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