Mostly Rubbish Albums Up For Mercury Prize Again

Can you remember who won the Mercury Music Prize last year? Us neither - and we wrote about it about a million times. Having looked it up, we realised it was Antony And The Johnsons, pretty much a miserable fat bloke in a dress.

Who's going to win the Mercury Music Prize this year? Arsed if we know at the moment, but it probably won't be the best British album of the last 12 months. It never is. But the shortlist for the 2006 Mercury Music Prize has been revealed, so Arctic Monkeys might win it, or Muse, or Thom Yorke, or even Scritti bleeding Politti. Or, if we're lucky, Richard Hawley.

The Mercury Music Prize is always a slightly contentious award. Ostensibly the Mercury Music Prize is there to find and laud the best British album of the year, but the Mercury Music Prize judging panel are a contrary bunch of buggers, and so they'll pick some vastly popular albums, some decent albums that nobody has bought and a few albums that make them look a bit cool and elitist - usually leaving the actual best album somewhere out on the sidelines - while the winner is usually someone like Gomez or M People or a bunch of professional Julie Burchill impersonators like Antony And The Johnsons. 

This year it's business as usual for the Mercury Music Prize - the shortlist was announced yesterday to the usual "It's a good list"/"It's a shit list" carping, but which albums are on the shortlist? Lucky we're here for you, isn't it?

Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (Like listening to the last Libertines album and an audiobook of A Kestrel For A Knave at the same time. Already feeling a backlash)

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Ballad Of The Broken Seas (A woman kicked out of Belle & Sebastian for being too twee and a man with a voice like a chainsaw team up to fairly lovely effect)

Editors - The Back Room (Just like every other British band at the moment, only vaguely Goth)

Guillemots - Through The Windowpane (We liked Guillemots about a year ago, but now everyone else has caught on we're so over their self-consciously eccentric nonsense, as is our wont as fickle, attention-sapped bloggers)

Richard Hawley - Coles Corner (Richard Hawley does northern glumness in such a beautiful way that we want him to win. There, we said it) 

Hot Chip - The Warning (If Hawley doesn't win the Mercury Music Prize, then Hot Chip should. Easily the most inventive album on the list)

Muse - Black Holes And Revelations (This is what Muse sound like: "widdly widdly widdly widdly widdly widdly widdly exploding dark nebulae widdly widdly widdly woo")

Zoe Rahman - Melting Pot (The token 'nobody has ever heard this' Mercury Music Prize nominee…)

Lou Rhodes - Beloved One (…Or maybe this one is)

Scritti Politti - White Bread, Black Beer (Ask your Dad)

Sway - This Is My Demo (This is grime, or so we're told. You may have heard this album in the seconds immediately preceding that time you got happy-slapped)

Thom Yorke - The Eraser (Thom Yorke doesn't want this to be called a solo record, even though he did it on his own and he's used his name as the recording artist. The wonk-eyed fool)

So that's it - according the the Mercury Music Prize panel, one of these is the best British album of the last year. Which one is it? Have any decent albums been left off the shortlist? Leave your comments below if you'd like to.

Read more:

Monkeys get Mercury nod - Sky

[story by Stuart Heritage]