It wasn’t a surprise to see this year’s Mercury Music Prize shortlist. After all, every year the same selection of albums is produced near enough. There are a couple of genuinely interesting, vaguely experimental, indie records. There are a couple of very generic and boring indie records. There’s a token electronic record or two. Comeback albums are often fairly popular too, and the rest is usually made up by a few singer-songwriters or urban music artists, depending on what’s more in vogue at the moment. There’s never any metal, or hardcore for that matter.
This year, however, there seems to be an extra degree of furore around the selected shortlist, and not just become some the cretins in charge hate music enough to put Jake Bugg on it. Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine has expressed his discontent at the fact that the band’s comeback album m b v was ineligible for being entered for the prize on the basis that its “digital distribution” was handled entirely through the band’s own website. In essence the prize has discounted m b v on the basis that it has been released in a format that is too independent, which is a middle finger to all the hard-working independent musicians in the country today.
The fact that the Mercury Prize is actively biased against independent musical distribution methods in such a way is, of course, pathetic and hugely unfair. However it is hardly surprising. After all, this is an award that rarely features any independent bands on the basis that they have to pay a few hundred pounds (and provide a ton of CDs) in order to enter. If you’re a truly independent artist, or signed to an independent record label, then entering isn’t even a real possibility unless you have hit the jackpot big time with a recent record.
Among the acclaimed artists of the last twelve months not to have even bothered entering their record for the prize are Leeds psych tricksters Hookworms, whose record Pearl Mystic is certain to rank very highly in the AOTY list here at Echoes & Dust:
@seaninsound @MikeDiver re:Mercury, we didn't enter. On top of the entry fee it's thousands more in marketing fees if shortlisted.
— MJ (@hopeformen) August 29, 2013
It really does rather beg the question as to what the Mercury Prize is actually for if it is effectively impossible for independent, underground artists to apply. Being deadly serious, it doesn’t matter one way or the other whether My Bloody Valentine are eligible or not. They don’t need the publicity, and they certainly don’t need the money. What does matter is that the Mercury Prize has given itself an undeserved image of trying to support genuinely creative artists in the UK and Ireland. It’s a sham and a farce, and will only result in more casual music fans failing to discover music that is so much better than the crap on the cover of the NME.
So, whilst it’s a tired argument, it bears repeating that the Mercury Prize deserves critique. Without making the same old point year after year one senses that the system has even less chance of changing, and with bands already struggling big time in the current financial climate, the last thing independent artists need is continual kicks in the teeth from institutions meant to be on their side.
An alternative shortlist of Mercury Prize nominees
Altar of Plagues - Teethed in Glory and Injury
BATS - The Sleep of Reason
Boards of Canada - Tomorrow’s Harvest
Cathedral - The Last Spire
Frightened Rabbit - Pedestrian Verse
Gallops - Yours Sincerely, Dr. Hardcore
Grumbling Fur - Glynnaestra
Haxan Cloak - Excavation
Hookworms - Pearl Mystic
Humanfly - Awesome Science
Rolo Tomassi - Astraea
Tall Ships - Everything Touching
