The Mercury Music prize, however, aims to honour the best British album released over the last year – the one crafted so well that John Lennon is itching in his coffin to try and claim credit for it.

This prize isn’t like your typical Smash Hits or Brit nomination. It challenges your perception of music and doesn’t necessarily nominate the most popular bands. From dubstep to electronics, there is something that will hopefully please the music fan who looks a little deeper then the same ten bands featured in Q magazine. Hold on tight as we go in for a deeper look at this year’s nominations, with the rest to come tomorrow.

Adele – 19 – Oh God yeah! This is Adele – the girl who looks like she probably could knock you out after a few drinks and a packet of chips. She doesn’t look like the ideal singer, but battling against the anorexic pretty girl singer has won her respect and a lot of fans. Will she win? Probably not against more experimental artists.

British Sea Power – Do You Like Rock Music? – These guys are nuts live. Not only do they have strange polar bears and other creatures on stage with them, but they jump around and quite often break themselves for our amusement. A zany band who want to have fun and don’t care what people write about them. We love them.

Burial – Untrue – This is who should win this year’s prize. Though with hecklerspray’s backing, he probably won’t. An anonymous musician, little is known about him apart from the fact his LP brought dubstep to the masses and created a wave of interest in a scene that was previously underground.

Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid – Putting it bluntly, Elbow fucking rock. The lyrics are sly, dirty and take ages to figure out. There are no basic straightforward pop songs, but the way they are crafted means that anyone can listen. If Burial doesn’t win, then Elbow deserves it.

Estelle – Shine – The populist entry to get people who don’t care much about music interested. She wouldn’t win an award for her wonky dancing, and she won’t win for her album. The collaboration with sample king Kanye West was OK, but irritating and worse than the groin strain after a while.

Laura Marling – Alas, I Cannot Swim – One of this year’s ‘who is this?’ entry. An enchanting and gorgeous record full of personal and beautiful tracks. Another deserving winner but hasn’t quite got the killer hook. Still, she is an artist who can only benefit from being nominated through this award. She rocks a lot more than us.

Tomorrow is doomsday for all of the Mercury nominated artists, including Radiohead one of the blokes who used to be in Led Zeppelin.

To be fair, it’s only expected from a band who’ve defied the normal way of doing this since they appeared with 2003’s Decline of British Sea Power, from playing with the frankly bizarre Cooper Family, a 200-year-old group of folk singers, to getting into fights with German karate experts and having a giant bear prance around on stage with them. Not exactly Coldplay, is it?

So British Sea Power are back in January, with a new record titled Do You Like Rock Music?, and whilst we must admit to being quite partial to the Devil’s favourite tunes, it’s fair to say that British rock music is, well, a bit bland really. Some might even say shit. Rewind 10 years and you had the Gallaghers fighting, Blur on the front-page of The Sun, Pulp naming records after their favourite drugs, and well, basically loads of good bands making different and interesting music.

Not anymore. But British Sea Power stand out in a sea of blandness. They sing about giant sea birds, Polish plumbers and Slavia Prague FC. They’ve got lists on their website of what’s ‘Rock Music’ and what’s ‘Non-Rock Music’. Apparently Jamelia’s rock music, although Yan admits “I think that was somebody else’s suggestion. I’m sure there’s a good reason. Maybe cos she’s fit!” Tony Blair’s student band Ugly Rumours are also “Rock Music”. Apparently U2, Mussolini and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are “Non-Rock Music”.

BSP gigs are never dull affairs either, stages decked out in trees and branches, papier-mâché birds everywhere and a giant bear called Ursine Ultra roaming the stage, the crowd and getting beaten up by the band. Plus if you saw them supporting krautrock legends Faust you’d have witnessed bassist Hamilton being punched in the face by the singer. Apparently Hamilton was drunk. Yan says:

“Apparently he’s a karate expert or something. His excuse was he could tell Hamilton was gonna hit him, so he hit him in self-defence. But I don’t think he’s ever hit anyone in his life, so I think he’s gonna have to go back to karate school!”

So go and see BSP, it’ll be fun. They won’t preach to you about global poverty, climate change or the state of the music industry. In fact, ever polite, Yan admits “I’m not gonna go read the NME. I’ve got nothing against it, I just think we’re slightly removed from it. There’s probably worse bands than The Twang I guess.”

And if you’re not a big fan of them and all else fails, follow their lead. When BSP toured with The Flaming Lips, Yan admits “Half the time we’d do our set then take a load of funny pills and watch all the flashing lights!”

Just watch out for that bear…

[story by Dave Mercer] 

They followed it up with 2005's well-received Open Season, touring with the likes of David Bowie, The Flaming Lips and Jarvis Cocker. On the eve of the forthcoming album Do You Like Rock Music? we caught up with British Sea Power frontman Yan to hear tales of helicopters, soldiers, and playing every city in the world…

You guys are certainly getting a lot of press at the moment, Do You Like Rock Music? is seemingly going to be one of the most talked-about albums of 2008, as well as earning you plaudits like 'the British Arcade Fire'. Is the band feeling any extra pressure as a result?

It's a surprise to talk to so many people! We haven't sold bucketloads of records before, but we've had a fair amount of attention in other ways. It's just how it is. It's better having people that want to talk to you than no-one wanting to, isn't it? (laughter).

True. Zane Lowe's named your new single the 'Hottest Track in the World Ever'.

Yeah! We just got record of the new on Stuart Maconie as well. It's nice because we weren't too sure what was going to happen. It's been a while.

There's a few interesting stories floating around about recording the album. What's the story involving the army?

Well that was in Cornwall, about halfway through recording. We'd sort of borrowed part of a deserted fort owned by the army down on the coast. It was massive, and empty for the two weeks we were there. Then all of a sudden soldiers started turning up and there were helicopters and battleships doing army exercises! There's an interesting video of Martin Noble (guitarist) dressed up as a bear with all these young army lads fully camouflaged just laughing at him!

How did you go about recording the album?

We did some in Montreal with someone from Silver Mt Zion and an old guy from Arcade Fire. We thought we'd get away from London, and it'd be better being in a studio run by musicians. The idea was if we had a bit of an adventure when we were recording it'd come through onto the record and we'd have a better time ourselves.

You've played in some strange places. What's the plan for next year?

We're gonna try and play every city in the world! We've played on a boat up the Mersey, and a gig in the highest inn in England. I think we've got that sort of stuff out of our system for a little bit. I think we'll go for normal places now, hopefully the better ones where you know people are gonna be at the gig!

[interview by David Mercer]