Mercury Prize 2020 Shortlist – The Poll

Instant vote for Charli XCX - it's one of the best albums ever nominated for this prize

― imago, Thursday, 23 July 2020 11:46 (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah very easily charli

― ufo, Thursday, 23 July 2020 11:46 (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Looking forward to lurkers all voting for Sports Team.

(I have never actually heard Sports Team, probably should give it a go before I commit to hating them)

― Anti-Cop Ponceortium (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, 23 July 2020 11:48 (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

My very guilty secret is that I quite liked one of their singles (M5)

― imago, Thursday, 23 July 2020 11:49 (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Love Anna Meredith, but nothing beats Charli

― tangenttangent, Thursday, 23 July 2020 11:52 (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think Boyd is the only one I've heard but it's really good.

I feel very strongly that no British band should be called 'Sports Team'.

seems wild that FKA twigs wasn’t nominated, thought jessie ware might’ve made the list too

No Alabaster DePlume no credibility.

iirc only one solo woman has won it in the last ten years (PJ's second win)

I like the Georgia album a lot (except lol 'Ray Guns')

Was about to say Speech Debelle but apparently that was more than a decade ago!

No Alabaster DePlume no credibility.

is this a joke? serious question

he's real and released an absolutely sick album this year!

no i saw 30 seconds of it, sick would be one word yes

got something stuck in those lugs?!

reading elsewhere maybe i watched the wrong thing, whimsical spoken word is v much not my jam

there's a gorgeous instrumental album called To Cy & Lee

yeah that is definitely not the album people are going crazy about

xp

i'll check out the instrumental stuff, cos the other stuff is not for me

It's very very different.

ok yes this is more like it

why the fuck does he do that trenchant shit then?

maybe he's basically shite but struck lucky with the last album!

first thing i came across was this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQDzlpAbLfE

it's horrible

but that instrumental album, you're all correct, is quite lovely

I'd nom the latest Howard Riley solo album as the token jazz one - just because he's underrated as fuck and they'd never give it to a 77 year old Bley influenced pianist from Hudds anyway, but just for the hell of it!

I really like the Anna Meredith but I've got to vote for the PodgeRad album as it features our beloved violinist!

They got the wrong band!

Ha, you have to put yourself in for the Mercury (doesn't it cost money and everything?), and Porridge Radio are honestly very good, so I'm rooting for them.

christ that dePlume spoken word stuff is total shat!

it's absolutely nauseating!

hence my confusion

To Cy and Lee is actually a compilation of instrumentals from his other albums, mostly anyways, right? Is it even eligible?

maybe the success of Cy & Lee will convince him to never do that again

the UK jazz quartet Dinosaur seem to have been nominated a few times as the token Jazzers. I always blithely assumed they would be absolute dogshit, but I was surprised by that their latest album To The Earth, which is the first thing I've heard of theirs and is actually pretty good.

lmao what 2020 needed was Kate Tempest x Noel Fielding

imago if you haven't listened to To Cy & Lee yet, you might as well do so now before it shows up in the EOY top 10. I personally guarantee neither Tempest nor Fielding vibes of any kind

i don't know what the dates are for the award and i don't really care but Alfa Mist's Structuralism has got to be better than a bunch of these

voting for dark matter

can somebody tell me if i'd like the porridge radio record? i'm not often alienated by band names but that one's a real obstacle. i also hate the album title

sounds a bit gruel-ing, there is only a finite amount of stuff you can check out etc!

Of these, Dark Matter, even though I enjoyed it less than I thought I would.

Brad, I dunno, give them a try! I think most individual tracks will give you an idea of whether or not you like their general 'thing', so... try Sweet?

vocal cadences on that track sound v like courtney barnett imo

I'd not heard that spoken word DePlume stuff. Jesus! I'm not mad keen on his Soccer96 stuff either - it's a bit Nozin' Around.

To Cy and Lee, though, has been my lockdown record and it's gorgeous.

yeah i get it now

Stormzy. He'd have to be favourite to win right?

the way the announcement is framed, kiwanuka seems front-runner. haven't heard that one yet either

Porridge Radio have a nice sound but there's not much interesting songwriting yet based on the singles. They have a bit of promise. They really want to be The Cure

the cure is a strange comparison, they're far more shambolic and serrated. i do kind of hear some robert smith in the singer's inflections on 'born confused.'

*they = porridge radio

Not the most exciting list, but some genuinely great albums here. Porridge Radio, Michael Kiwanuka and Dua Lipa are all worthy of their nominations. Charli is the clear winner here. That album saved me a bit during the last few months.

Biggest omission is Jessie Ware but I figure they thought it was probably too much pop if they already had Dua Lipa, Georgia and Charli on there. Despite a couple of good singles, that Georgia is kinda boring and doesn't come close to what Jessie achieves on What's Your Pleasure in any way.

I really want to love Stormzy more than I do. He's capable of amazing singles (Vossi Bop, Big For Your Boots, Know Me From and Shut Up) and is definitely someone worth rooting for, but I lost interest in both of his albums half way through. I guess I'll just be waiting for the best of.

is it possible Jessie Ware was ineligible due to release date?

the cure is a strange comparison, they're far more shambolic and serrated. i do kind of hear some robert smith in the singer's inflections on 'born confused.'

― mozzy star (voodoo chili), Thursday, 23 July 2020 22:17 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

to be clear, the singer and the bassist really want to be the cure, the others maybe less so. like the cure, they have a nice grasp of rock dynamics

Stormzy is too big to win, same goes for Dua Lipa.

The Georgia album is underrated here - you can tell she's grown up in a house that's saturated in dance music, there's a sense of space and groove that you don't get in a lot of overstuffed modern synthpop records. Sort of a Joe Goddardish thing going on. It does sound straight out of 2009 but that's a comforting thing right now.

The Kano album is legit, the first record where he actually feels like he's fulfilling/not completely wasting his potential and its not the record you would have expected him to do that on. Its also total Mercury bait.

the georgia album had a few decent singles but was super underwhelming apart from those

I honestly don't hear much difference in quality between the singles and the rest (as opposed to, say, the Dua Lipa album which is better overall and has much higher highs and absolutely plummets off a cliff with the final two songs).

xps: the window this year was between 20 July 2019 and 17 July 2020, so jessie ware was eligible

I'm shocked that J Hus wasn't nominated

He used to be in the Icicle Works.

https://louderthanwar.com/misunderstanding-mcnabb-news-piece/

can't believe i wasn't aware of the important and valid opinions of Ian McNabb in 2020

Should stick to SAS fanfic

'It's Othering' – British-Japanese Artist Rina Sawayama Can’t Enter British Awards
A nationality clause in the Mercury Prize and the BRITs are stopping musicians from entering the race. It's turning the arts into a form of border control, the 'SAWAYAMA' musician says.

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/g5p8gj/mercury-prize-brits-rina-sawayama?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

When Rina Sawayama’s record label Dirty Hit asked her what she wanted for her first album, she told them: “I want to win a Mercury Award.”

tbf this is a terrible ambition

ANOHNI / Anthony & The Johnsons left the UK at the age of 10.

Kiwanuka over Dark Matter. I'm with pom that Matter is not as good as I want it to be, but I still like it, though I think Jeff Parker's Suite for Max Brown mines similar territory & is maybe a little cooler...

& much apologies to Mordy, Chinaski and other proponents but I legit thought To Cy & Lee was a total bore. I'll prob listen again to make sure, though

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I've only listened to the Laura Marling, but I dig Dua Lipa's singles.

Sports Team is not as bad as I thought it would be - definitely got a certain charm about it

It's gonna be Stormzy, yeah?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

It's gonna be Stormzy, yeah?

― Mark G, Tuesday, 8 September 2020 09:31 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

― System, Wednesday, 9 September 2020 01:01 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

ILM is gonna ILM

(I did mean Stormzy winning the Mercury, I mean, not this poll.)

absolutely correct (ILM) result

I put the end date of this poll as the day of the award, but it now seems to be 24th September

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/24/michael-kiwanuka-wins-2020-mercury-prize

good!

Mogwai are the new Gaz

otm

going for BCNR over black midi is astonishing nonsense too

not that i even care!!!!!!!!!

heard the mogwai LP was good, have not listened to it of course but anyway, not sure what my point was here

the point was - Mercury Prize 2021 - Are Mogwai the new Gaz?

once again I have heard none of these lps, I am firmly embedded in the 1940s right now, please advise.

buy stock in IBM