Mercury Nominees

The Mercury Award Nominees for 2007 have been announced!

This is a pretty prestigious award and in the past winners have included Portishead (with their album Dummy) and Antony and the Johnstons (with I am a Bird Now). You can learn more about the awards here.

The line up for this year is:

Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare

Basquiat Strings - Basquiat Strings

Dizzee Rascal - Maths and English

Klaxons - Myths of the Near Future

Maps - We Can Create

New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom

Jamie T - Panic Prevention

The View - Hats off to Buskers

Amy Winehouse - Back to Black

The Young Knives- Voices of Animals and Men

I'm inclined to think Amy Winhouse will win this time round.

But I think the most worthy of the award, and easily my favourite definately have to be the two I haven't listed above:

Fionn Regan - The End of History

Fionn Regan - Black Water Child

Fionn Regan - Angler's Curse [buy]


Bat for Lashes - Fur and Gold

Bat for Lashes - Horse and I

Bat for Lashes - The Wizard [buy]


After I bought The End of History on a whim last year my love for it grew suddenly and it is still spinning on my stereo. I saw Fionn earlier this year at a small gig at the Basement in Sydney and he was amazing. This guy has a real talent for guitar plucking. Even for slow songs he manages to pick quickly away to the rhythm. And he writes strong songs too. This album is loaded with songs that work together as an album and on their own.

Which also goes for BFL. She invokes the sounds of Bjork, Tori Amos and Cat Power but still manages to instill her own unique voice. There's a nice conceptual theme running through as well. Natasha Khan (who is BFL) draws from her strict religious upbringing, where animals were sacrificed, including her pet goat. She did some travelling in Pakistan too so she seems to have adopted some of their culturalities too. In the video clip for "What's a Girl to Do" (which you can check out here) she's got this odd animal spiritual thing going on as she bikerides with people with animal masks on. And in the clip for "Prescilla" (here) seems to explore her childhood and religious upbringing a bit.

If I was to decide who got the Mercury award it would have to be one of these two remarkable people. I can't wait to see what more they have to share because these two albums also happen to be their debuts.