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The Mercurys are interesting because they seem to exist as a barometer of what a certain segment of the musical establishment and corporate world believes we should find interesting / be purchasing. That decision, as it's nominally based on the critical reception of a panel of judges, rather than sales or popularity, says a lot about the way in which the industry or critical bodies represented by the panel believe music is or should be headed. I do think the Mercury is the strangest of the major music awards, as it doesn't have any clear criteria by which the prize should be awarded. Discussion of the deservedness of the winners seems to focus on one of three separate and possibly mutually antagonistic qualities:
- Musically adventurous, technically nuanced, unusual new forms of music.
- Albums that capture the zeitgeist, or represent a neglected, outsider musical culture.
- Popular and critical success.
It seems fairly often that the Mercury judges will aim at highlighting (unjustly?) neglected or underground genres that excite them and that they believe should gain greater exposure, though I think some of the most interesting results - Antony, for instance - come about as a compromise avoiding two more popular albums. Giving the prize to Antony seems to have half been about who didn't get the Mercury that year - which is not to diminish Antony's achievement, and I was thrilled that it went to (IMO) so deserving a winner, though I think it probably should have been awarded to the album preceding 'I am a bird now', which was a far more coherent piece of work.
Which sort of points out one of the Mercury's major failings - cool Dad syndrome, in that it seems perpetually behind the curve, rewarding grime and drum'n'bass a little while after they reach popular boiling point. Perhaps this can be attributed to the mechanics of having an album come to the notice of its panel, but as an avenue to boost the sales of neglected artists, I don't think it can be discounted.
Cool Dad syndrome does rather seem to be in operation this year, as I find it almost impossible to believe that Klaxons' album could have been judged on the quality of its music, as it's pretty much instantly forgettable, badly produced & mastered and curiously uniconic, in that its marketing seems to have happened pretty much through the images of other people. Interesting too that a lot of the defence of the Klaxons (like this Guardian blog entry) has been not in terms of their music but their representation of a youth subculture. In fact, it seems to me that they exist in a strange relationship to the kids dressed in neon clown vomit that made up the culture at Family, Antisocial and that continues its zombie afterlife at Boombox - given that the music policy there seemed to be an upbeat electro that Klaxons never really come anywhere near, to parade them as representative of that strange Shoreditch scene seems to ignore the complex niches of taste and identity that intermix there, much of which was inflected with a heavy dose of irony that seems missing from Myths of the Near Future.
(If you were going to reward a band as representing a subculture, New Young Pony Club seem a much better choice, as their appropriation of New Wave fashions and markers of identity seem much closer to that scene.)
Anyway, the Mercurys? Interesting for what it says about the methods of choice, I guess, and I'm kinda glad that Dizzee and Antony got the money. Relying on any national awards ceremony to give you suggestions of what music to explore is probably a dead end, of course. |
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