If music needed saving, I'd die for it

[venta]

Earlier this week, the nominations for the Mercury Music Prize were announced. I know people grumble about the prize, about how the entrance fee freezes out small bands, and so on but if nothing else the nominees do provide a cross section of decent albums from the recent year.

Browing the nominations is interesting, but what's much better is that the NME have provided a handy page where you can listen to all the nominated artists:

Listen!

For some artists it's just links to videos, but for others you can stream the entire album.

Thus far I have been:

• blown away by PJ Harvey


• unexpectedly impressed by Tinie Tempah


• underwhelmed by Ghostpoet


• oblivious to Metronomy


• currently deciding about Everything Everything

Get your bets in now :)

What should have been on the list that wasn't? What's your best album from a British band in the past twelve months? (I'm not entirely sure how the Mercury panel define "of the year", I'm decreeing that it means July 2010 - June 2011.)

I'm considering adding Into the Murky Water by The Leisure Society and Drown Your Heart Again by The Strange Death of Liberal England.

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

I have no idea. Given that there is (or was) a perfectly well-respected Mexican composer who wrote in 2 1/2 / 4 (ie two-and-a-half four) I think all bets are off.

Logically it should be a series of bars each with 15 crotchet beats, but since I'm guessing that Ms Harvey doesn't actually formally score her music, she might not have considered how to handle this eventuality. If she did, it would seem less hideously unwieldy to write it out with changes to 4/4 and 3/4. I'm sure a more competent musician can explain the difference in terms of the sound, but I can't.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

"it should be a series of bars each with 15 crotchet beats" - that would be brilliant, especially considering that it does about 4 of those, then goes to more sensible 4-time for a few bars. I suspect it's a cunning trick to make people fall over if they try to dance to it.