Bat For Lashes’ Two Suns, Florence & The Machine’s Lungs, and the self-titled debuts from Glasvegas and La Roux are among the nominees for the Barclaycard Mercury Prize, awarded annually to the best album from the United Kingdom or Ireland. While there are some glaring omissions as always (um, Micachu?????), digging around for videos by the nominees revealed a couple of new-to-me acts—the hip-hop artist Speech Debelle, the experimental jazz outfit Led Bib—who proved intriguing on first listen. (Oddsmakers currently have Lungs as the favorite.) The nominees, and representative videos, after the jump.
Bat for Lashes, Two Suns
Florence & The Machine, Lungs
Friendly Fires
Friendly Fires - “Skeleton Boy”
Glasvegas
Kasabian, West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum
La Roux
Led Bib, Sensible Shoes
Led Bib - “Squirrel Carnage”
Lisa Hannigan, Sea Sew
Speech Debelle, Speech Therapy
Sweet Billy Pilgrim, Twice Born Men
Sweet Billy Pilgrim - “Kalypso”
The Horrors, Primary Colours
The Horrors - “Sea Within A Sea”
The Invisible
(This video about the making of the album artwork was the only Invisible-specific clip that was directly related to this album, but this live performance sounds quite promising. The Invisible is a supergroup featuring members of Polar Bear, Hot Chip and Zongamin, and their album was produced by Matthew Herbert; they’re label/tourmates with Micachu, which almost lessens the sting of Jewellery not being nominated. Almost.)
Kasabian, Florence Lead Mercury Prize Nominations [Billboard]
It must suck to be Little Boots right now.
I’m a little disappointed but not surprised to see the lack of Lily Allen. If anyone is most deserving in this list, Bat For Lashes should win based on staying power in producing an excellent follow-up record and being somewhat devoid of the hype that the other up-and-coming female vocalists in the UK have at the moment.
LOL
I think the “idea” of Little Boots turned out to be much more exciting than what we actually got (same with La Roux).
But Kasabian… really? This is basically going to be a showdown between Bat for Lashes and Florence.
I don’t think Lily Allen is taken seriously anywhere outside of the internet, which is a shame of course. In the UK, she’s a tabloid queen. In the US, she’s just a blip. Elsewhere, who knows. But since the Mercury Prize is a British invention, she’ll always be doomed.
@brasstax: It’s Not Me, It’s You was reviewed quite positively. Unfortunately, I think the two follow-up singles to “The Fear” trashed the album’s chances of being taken positively.
The Little Boots album is actually very good, in spite of my utter loathing for “New in Town”; it’s not the pop smash I expected, and it can be a bit anodyne at times, but I think that musically, it’s the most adventurous of the albums- better than Florence’s cut-rate Kate Bush impersonation (Siobhan Donaghy must be seething right now).
La Roux’s album is my favorite of the year and of the list; it’s just a solid gold pop album bursting with hooks from start to finish. Elly is such an unpleasant figure, though. They haven’t got a chance in hell of winning.
@brasstax: Lily Allen sells a LOT of records, even here. She’s “taken seriously” by bean counters as well as tabloids. That’s got to be worth something.
*being taken seriously WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY ENGLISH.
@NunyaB: I agree that “New in Town” is the worst of the worst of what Little Boots has to offer, but outside of a couple key tracks I don’t really like the rest of her album either. Weird, because I’m definitely the target market for it. And the same goes for La Roux… bad, boxy production of songs that wear out their welcome with me after one or two listens. I much prefer Florence and Natasha’s Kate Bush knock-offs, because there’s some real texture in those songs…not just in the arrangements, but in the songwriting itself.
@slowburn: I hadn’t seen any of the chart or sales numbers for It’s Not Me, It’s You, but assumed it wasn’t as much of a hit as it rightfully should be (although, I think it should’ve sold 20M by now, so I’d probably still be disappointed).
@brasstax: I really like Natasha’s Kate Bush impersonation; it’s Florence that gets on my nerves as nothing else can. I like “Rabbit Heart” though, so I think it’s her more than anything fundamentally wrong with the music.
La Roux’s “bad, boxy production” is what makes me swoon over the album, but I recognize that my unquestioning devotion to Yazoo might make me more receptive than other people to the bleeps and bloops that make up the core of the album.
As for Boots… yeah, there are problems with the album. There are a LOT of problems with it. It’s just that I think the highlights of the album are SUCH highlights they allow me to overlook things like the butchering of “Stuck on Repeat”… and the bonus track… and the inexplicable omission of “Love Kills” and “Not Now” and “Magical” and “Catch 22″… and the endless references to hearts. She is a prodigious talent, I really do think, and I hope her second album lives up to all the promise she has.
Having said all this I think the upcoming (ha) Sophie Ellis-Bextor album will put the efforts of all the artists I have mentioned above to shame with supreme ease.
@NunyaB: Just to make it clear, I will typically gush over anything made up with the elements that make up the La Roux album — bleeps, bloops, and all — but it’s a specific complaint I have with this record, sounding like it’s been compressed into the sub-atomic level. And then there’s the weak songs, but I can understand how some people may dig them (even I liked “Quicksand” once upon a time).
And yeah, I couldn’t really embrace earlier Florence material until “Rabbit Heart” came around, and then there turned out to be a lot of other stuff on Lungs I liked as well and for the same reasons.
@Maura: How the what the why didn’t The Joy Formidable get a nod? amirite!
I don’t really know any of these albums except Lisa Hannigan’s, but she definitely deserves awards for that album. Good stuff.
I think that this is probably going to come down to Bat For Lashes and Florence & the Machine - and my money is on Bat For Lashes, though Florence and her Eurythmics revival (seriously! For all the comparisons to Kate Bush, “Rabbit Heart” really sounds a lot like a lost Eurythmics single to my ears) might benefit from more recent hype. And Kasabian? Really? Am I missing something here? The latest Manics album would’ve been much, much more deserving.
@brasstax: I figured it would have been too much to ask for The Joy Formidable to snag a spot, but the exclusion of Micachu is a crime.
Go Bat for Lashes!
Seriously, “Daniel” is likely becoming my favorite track of the year. Can’t get enough of it.
Re: La Roux - Yaz called, they want their music back.
Led Bib sounds quite indebted to early 70’s Miles Davis (his group with Jarrett, Corea, Holland, DeJohnette, Airto)
The Bat for Lashes is very nice.
Kasabian got nominated and Franz Ferdinand didn’t?! What the hell.
@bcapirigi: Easy, Tonight: FF was awful.
@NunyaB: I really love it. A whole lot. I thought all the British music critic types did, too.
I don’t know who will win, and I don’t care. I’m rooting strongly for Lisa Hannigan, and I’m rooting strongly against Glasvegas. Otherwise, I don’t particularly like or dislike any of the nominated artists (among the ones I’ve heard, at least)- sorry, not even BfL. She’s OK. Lisa Hannigan, though, makes damn-near-perfect indie pop.
@kicking222: Thank goodness she finally kicked Damien Rice’s lame ass to the curb.
The Friendly Fires record is incredible. The rest of these are either shit(Kasabian) or filler padded discs around one or two good songs(Bat for Lashes, La Roux, especially Little Boots)
Let’s remove Kasabian and replace them with Future of the Left, OK?
This list is why I’m no longer an Anglophile. It’s Snooze Central. And I can’t take Bat for Lashes seriously with that album cover. Anybody who would agree to that atrocity doesn’t care that much about their art. I’m being 100% serious.