Mercury Music Prize

[PeteSome]

I thought someone might have posted about this already, but given this week its not too surprising they haven’t.

In case anyone doesn’t know, this is basically a music industry, pat on the back for the best album of the year. I often question the thinking behind it and the shortlist etc, but anyway PJ Harvey won it this year for ‘Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea’. Can’t really argue with that, a quality record from someone who deserves some extra recognition.

Some past winners include Gomez, Roni Size and Portishead. They normally seem to pick something which will make people listen to a genre of music, especiall the Roni Size record which broke Drum n Bass in the uk mainstream.

Anyone else follow this ‘thing’?

[SG]

I heard that Polly Jean won it,congrats to her,what I heard from that album sounded good,so they picked a good album.

[everyonelovesjaron]

Portishead deserved it the year they won.

PJ Harvey is terribly over rated, but that’s just my opinion.

[SG]

She`s not the easiest to get into,but I think she is worth listening to,I think she deserved the award.Her 98 album "Is This Desire" was overlooked,I thought it was good.

[Bucky Ramone]

"Is this desire?" is my favourite PJ Harvey album, I think it’s a lot better than this year’s album (although "We float" is one of the most beautiful songs of this year).

One of the more surprising nominees of this year were the Turin Brakes. I really like their "The Optimist LP", very beautiful songs with some strange lyrics.

To quote the review on allmusic.com:

After repeat plays, the meanings of many of the songs are still a little obscure, but the feeling definitely grows. There seem to be traces of earthlings here and there – is that the spectral presence of the renowned Homosapien Paul Simon? Despite the acoustic setting this is almost as weird and original as Mercury Rev or early Captain Beefheart. File under: I’m not sure what’s going on here, but it’s interesting.

[PeteSome]

Yeah, the Turin Brakes record is really good too. Quiet and accoustic with wicked lyrics, I can see where the Simon and Garfunkel comparisons are coming from, but not really like them at all.

[Author]

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