Race for the Prize

The Mercury Music Prize nominations have been announced today. Given that it is an assessment of the best British and Irish albums released in a twelve-month period that has been almost completely dominated by bands from the US and Scandinavia, it must have been a pretty difficult task to come up with a list of twelve formidable records. What they have come up with is a solid but fairly unexciting list, perhaps most notable for what is excluded (Starsailor, Pulp, New Order, Faultline and Idlewild) than what is included (which is impressive in range but lacking in star quality).

For my money The Streets should win this by an urban mile for the wonderful Original Pirate Material, but you may want to hedge your bets with an each-way wager on the just-released debut album by The Coral riding a Gomez-like Hoxton Surge to the prize.