REVOLVER:IT'S CRUNCH time for the Mercury Music Prize. The award for the best British/Irish album of the year had its worst- ever result 12 months ago when the overall winner, Speech Debelle, turned out to be the worst-selling Mercury winner in the event's 18-year history.
It was a ridiculous choice in the first place (the favourite was Florence the Machine, but she had committed the mortal Mercury sin of being popular) and it reeked of demographic box-ticking. You can’t help feeling that the judges were more impressed by Debelle’s bio than her actual album.
The Irish have never carried their weight in the Mercury, but this year there is a very real chance that two Irish acts will make it onto the 12-strong shortlist, which will be announced next Tuesday. There have been mutterings in all the right places about Villagers (and if there’s any justice, Conor O’Brien will be on the shortlist) and the other act picking up approving nods is Two Door Cinema Club.
There’s already an out-and-out favourite for this year’s overall winner in the shape of The xx, who have managed to break out of the indie ghetto while still reeking of the “underground” – a place the Mercury people have an unhealthy interest in.
Elsewhere, expect shortlist appearances (solely according to me) by Kele Okereke (the most po-faced man in music), Fyfe Dangerfield, Plan B, Stornoway and Martina the Diamonds. There will probably be the usual “modern jazz” album in there, which at this stage has really just got to be a patronising joke.
As for MIA, she definitely deserves to be there with a belter of a recent album, but whether the panel have had enough time to run the rule over it is a moot point.
The acid test of the Mercury's worth will be whether it gives the nod to the best album of last 12 months – which, in case you need reminding, is Jamie T's masterful Kings and Queens. If it's not on the shortlist then it's a gross abdication of the award's duty, and I, for one, will be sending off stern e-mails to the Mercury's top-table people.
Other names in the mix should include Laura Marling, Steve Mason, Lightspeed Champion and Wild Beasts.
The other big acid test for the Mercury is whether Gorillaz make the cut. Plastic Beachis a veritable tour-de-force, and for many people would make an ideal overall winner. If it doesn't make it on Tuesday, it will be just another reason to give up on the Mercury altogether.
The talk is that, after the Debelle debacle, the prize will surprise everyone and go, for the first time, with a relatively well- known winner. There's just been too many dud choices over the year: Ms Dynamite winning over The Streets's Original Pirate Materialin 2002; Gomez over Massive Attack in 1998; and, most egregiously, Roni Size's New Formsbeating Radiohead's Ok Computerin 1997.
At the moment, that putative winner looks like Gorillaz, with Jamie T sneaking in if the voice is split between traditionalists and modernisers.
Either way, next Tuesday’s shortlist is perhaps the most crucial in the Mercury’s history. Do they give up on their old “oh, but it’s so obscure and the artist hand-knitted their own album cover” or do they come into the real world and acknowledge the musical mastery of Gorillaz or Jamie T?
