Has the Mercury Music prize posted its best and most eclectic list ever?

It has its critics for being media-centric and pointless or for some people being ‘too middle class’ but this year the Mercury Music Awards short list for 2014 actually looks pretty good.

Highly eclectic and with some genuinely interesting entries it has veered away from the comfy slipper indie world to a really genuine eclectic reflection of 2014 British pop culture- of course there are holes in the list and we have given up on rock and metal ever being allowed onto the BBC and the Mercurys but this list has lots of great stuff on it.

Our faves are the Young Fathers– the Edinburgh based rappers who we were covering years ago on LTW who have now really come of age and are heading for a breakthrough that could be sparked by the awards and the fab Kate Tempest who is totally stunning with her street machine gun rap that is funny, dark, dangerous and thrilling and who we want to see win the award as well as the kooky and fascinatingly off kilter and ground breaking FKA twigs and we do love that Royal Blood album. We would have loved to have entered Evil Blizzard who we released on our label but we know that rock music has little chance of being considered so saved the money.

It’s refefeshing to see less of the big indie bands although Bombay Bicycle Club are placed in there and Damon Albarn’s solo album was good but seems out of place on here. If there is any point to the Mercury Awards it’s surely to break an underground musician into the mainstream and there are some great opportunities to do that this year.

The 2014 Albums of the Year are:
Anna Calvi 
One Breath
Bombay Bicycle Club 
So Long, See You Tomorrow
Damon Albarn 
Everyday Robots
East India Youth 
Total Strife Forever
FKA twigs 
LP1 GoGo
Penguin 
v2.0 Jungle 
Jungle
Kate Tempest 
Everybody Down
Nick Mulvey 
First Mind
Polar Bear 
In Each and Every One
Royal Blood 
Royal Blood
Young Fathers 
Dead