by Andrew Trendell | Photos by Press
17 albums that deserve a Mercury Prize 2015 nomination
The shortlist is announced on Friday - here are the records worthy of recognition
The Mercury Prize 2016 shortlist is announced on Friday (16 October). Yet again, it's been an incredible year for UK music - so here's our pick of the artists and albums most deserving of a nomination.
Wolf Alice - My Love Is Cool: Wolf Alice, more than any other band to have emerged over the past few years, have the ability to condense all the joy and angst that comes from being young into three minutes of punchy pop rock. "Remember when we cut our hair?" Ellie Rowsell asks a childhood friend in 'Bros', "Both looked like boys but we didn't care / Stuck it out together, like we always do." It's an album of earnest, simply stated nostalgia, intertwined with moments of raucous, angry shouts. (Alex Pollard)
Everything Everything - Get To Heaven: It'd be great to see Everything Everything take the Mercury for their most innovative and definitive album to date. Get To Heaven has someone for everyone, between the infectious hooks of the lead singles, the hip-hop dimensions on 'No Reptiles' and expansive stadium tunes like 'To The Blade' and closer,'Warm Healer'. Everything Everything have given convention a death sentence with this one; it's about time. (Will Butler)
Twilight Sad - Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave: The crowning moment from one of Scotland's most criminally underrated acts. It's a towering accomplishment of textured cinematic misery and open-hearted, poetic beauty. It is so dark and gruelling many may call it a difficult listen, but the truth is that it's a pleasure to get lost in their sea of undefinable sounds - wondering somewhere between The Cure at their peak, Amnesiac-era Radiohead and the shoegaze greatness of My Bloody Valentine. But the truth is they're incredible in their own world and on their own terms. (Andrew Trendell)
The Maccabees - Marks To Prove It: With their fourth studio album, the ever rising Brits outdid themselves with their most richly layered and dense offering to date. Not afraid to go all out sonically with huge tracks like 'Something Like Happiness' and strip things back to heart wrenching basics with unforgettable cuts such as 'Silence', The Maccabees delivered on all musical fronts with their signature tweaks of intensity. (James Moore)
Laura Marling - Short Movie: To say that Marling, with three nominations already under her belt, is a safe bet for this year would be to somewhat undermine the ingenuity and beauty of her fifth album. Somehow both her most accessible, and her most bizarre offering to date, Short Movie is steeped in scuzzy Americana, and vocal inflections so expressive they rival even Bob Dylan's most divisive output. It's a devastating and ambitious offering, and might even be enough to end Marling's run of falling at the final hurdle. (Alex Pollard)
JME - Integrity: Controversial statement incoming - JME is the most representational and significant voice in UK music right now. Noel Gallagher, Gaz Coombes, even Jamie T - they're the forerunners of a bygone era. Jamie Adenuga is a rapper, philosopher (check his Twitter) and entrepreneur who has, over the years, cultivated a commercial brand as well as single-handedly reinvigorating the UK's most exciting musically export as current, Grime. Integrity is symbolic of everything Grime stands: a reactive innovation that's solely unique to young people in the UK right now. (Will Butler)
Jamie XX - In Colour: Back at the end of May, the UK producer released what was to become the perfect soundtrack for many people's summer. In a daring move, Jamie XX pieced together all of the sounds he's been experimenting with over the past six years, giving us everything from ominous ballads and experimental tracks with different vocalists, to undeniable floor fillers that still dominate various club scenes. Eclectic and prolific, there's something for everybody on this LP. It would be brilliant to see him recognised outside of his Mercury-winning work with The xx.
Marika Hackman - We Slept At Last: This isn't an album that instantly demands your attention - rather one that gently creeps its way into your consciousness, its lyrics sometimes beautiful, sometimes sinister, quite often an intoxicating mix of the two. "Lay on your back, breathe it in," she sings on 'Monday Afternoon', "The sickly sweet of my rotting skin." (Alex Pollard)
Foals - What Went Down: Four albums and finally reaching their true headliner and arena-filling potential, Foals reached levels of greatness years ago - and What Went Down is just another milestone of a band worthy of becoming a British institution. With brute force and tenderness in equal measure, What Went Down is as punky as it is progressive. An intense experience from start to finish, Foals drag us to the tempest and pull us back into safety just before the cliff crumbles. What Went Down is the most daring and exciting record since their debut - an uncompromising triumph. (Andrew Trendell)
Gengahr - A Dream Outside: Putting a nail in the paint-by-numbers indie-rock coffin that the UK has been grieving over since the mid-noughties, Gengahr takes from the more left-field sounds of US alt-rock and makes melodic, exciting and blissful music that is still quintessentially British. Their debut album was suited head-to-toe in instrumentally daring manoeuvres and retains a levity without drifting irreversibly into the floaty axis - A Dream Outside is more than just a promising debut. (Will Butler)
Du Blonde - Welcome Back To Milk: Surely one of the most underrated albums of the year, Welcome Back To Milk, released under the new moniker of Beth Jeans Houghton, is an assured, playful and enigmatic offering. One moment, it's poignant, alt-rock balladry, the next it unapologetically layers spiky riffs reminiscent of Red Hot Chili Peppers with Houghton's deep, expressive vocals. It's strange, eclectic and quite brilliant. (Alex Pollard)
New Order - Music Complete: Parting ways with a member so seemingly quintessential as Hooky would have been the death knell for most bands - especially those carrying the weight of a legacy like New Order. However, there's a compulsion, life and colour to Music Complete that renders this as their finest album in over two decades. From the Euro-pop brilliance of 'Plastic', the new wave revival of 'Singularity', the disco-noir abandon of 'People On The Highline' or Iggy Pop's guest spot on the existential anthem 'Stray Dog', New Order have found relevance in yet another era, and sound as essential as ever. (Andrew Trendell)
Public Service Broadcasting - The Race For Space: This is more of a hopeful suggestion, than a confident prediction. Active in the musical world for the last five years, the band have conquered many of the festival circuits, but are still wildly underrated in our eyes. Amongst an endless sea of carbon copy guitar bands, this instrumental duo create uniquely lush and immersive cinematic instrumentals that are littered with fascinating samples of mission control dialogue in the never ending space race. (James Moore)
Four Tet - Morning/Evening: Concise, vibrant and beautiful duality - this two track, 40 minute album is a trip down memory lane for any Four Tet supporters and the absolutely perfect introduction for anyone unfamiliar with the London producers abstract mix of the synthetic and organic. An album of two parts, as the summer closes for frostier scenes, Evening/Morning flourishes as a record for all seasons and all tastes. (Will Butler)
Hot Chip - Why Make Sense: Continuing with their heady mixtures of joyful electronic pop and eery musical undertones, Hot Chip released what is by far their most refined and focused studio record so far. It's romantic yet euphoric, mature yet undeniably danceable. From the mandatory head bobbing of Huarache Lights to the house infused sedation of Need You Now, Why Makes Sense successfully covers all the sonic bases of the fifteen years strong band with ease.
The Libertines - Anthems For Doomed Youth: A decade in the making, The Libs had to go through years of tribulation before this triumph. Band splits, stints in prison, drugs, rehab, the works - the good ship Albion was nearly lost at sea. Their comeback shows could have just been a cynical cash-cow of a band raping the reunion circuit, but instead they inspired an album loaded with the filth, the fury, the passion and the poetry of the band you once knew, but raising their game with a mature songcraftsmanship that finally earns them their legacy. The good ship Albion sails on. (Andrew Trendell)
Chvrches - Every Open Eye: We think its criminal that Gigwise's album of the year 2013, The Bones Of What You Believe, was given a Mercury snub. However, now is surely their time. Every Open Eye is just sheer pop euphoria. 'Keep You On My Side' is a sci-fi rush, while 'Empty Threat' is an overwhelming surge of happy toxins - brought on by the kind of soundtrack to those moments in 80s movies where the losers figure it out and come out on top. So shamelessly satisfying, this is the audio equivalent of high five. The true focal point of the record is 'Clearest Blue' - it's a mini odyssey of power-pop and the dictionary definition of 'banger'. It's so ideal and complete, that one can realistically hope that they may yet bloom into the Depeche Mode or Human League for a new era. (Andrew Trendell)
This week sees the shortlist for the 2015 Mercury Music Prize revealed. Arguably the most prestigious award in UK music, expect a genre-crossing selection of some of the finest album releases of the past 12 months.
And what a year it's been - across indie, pop, grime, rock and beyond, the UK has really been punching above its weight in terms of brilliant releases. From returning legends like New Order, to immaculate debuts from the likes of Wolf Alice, via bands finally hitting the sweet spot of greatness like Foals and The Twilight Sad, we don't envy the judges who have to cut it down to just a handful of nominees.
There will only be 11-12 finalists, but we sure do hope that among are a bunch of these 17 more than worthy albums.