via The Telegraph
So that’s it for another year? The prize nobody really cares about was won by a band nobody really loves. The announcement was made in a five minute slot at 10pm on Channel 4 before the award show was shunted back to the nether regions of the digital channels which is where one fears the whole music business is going to end up if it doesn’t start getting its act together.
The victory of Alt J should be another nail in the coffin of the monumentally irrelevant Barclaycard Mercury Prize, which has, after 20 years of lukewarm controversy and pitiful prize money surely outlived its inscrutable purpose. The obscure Leeds quartet were the bookies favourites from the very start, which tells you all you need to know not just about how peculiarly predictable the Mercury has become but how utterly disconnected from the throbbing heart of popular music culture.
Alt J weren’t deemed such a sure shot because they have stormed the balustrades of youth culture in 2012, made music that shook the nation, ripped up the charts and sent fans and critics into a frenzy at their dizzying invention and emotional heft. It was simply that in another weak year for the struggling British music business, Alt J ticked the boxes of an award that favours the kind of cerebral, arty, scruffily independent music that serious music cognoscenti admire but fewer and fewer people actually buy.
On its release in May, Alt J’s single Breezeblocks soared to the dizzy heights of number 75 in the UK charts. Their album, An Awesome Wave, reached a respectable but hardly earth shattering number 19. It picked up some good reviews and was generally ignored by the public. Hopefully (and, to be fair, deservedly) their clever, understated post-Radiohead folk inflected psychedelia will sell a few more copies now but does anybody seriously imagine this arty, elaborate outfit are about to set the world on fire? They have about as much chance of becoming a major musical sensation as previous Mercury winners Gomez and Badly Drawn Boy, artists who, in many ways, they resemble. They are intricate and clever, literate and rootsy, but they don’t really draw blood.
It feels a bit curmudgeonly deprecating Alt J on the day when they should be celebrating a victory of sorts, the recognition of a critical panel which will hopefully have a positive knock on effect on their career (although this is not a given, since the Mercury has had a notoriously detrimental effect on the prospects of winners pushed out of their comfort zone before they were ready, like Speech Debelle). The truth is I genuinely like Alt J’s album and admire the band. I just don’t think they really matter in any bigger scheme of things: they are just another odd and interesting guitar band swimming against the electro-digital tide of popular music’s future.
There was only one artist on the Mercury shortlist who has any genuine resonance in contemporary pop culture, the controversial rapper Plan B. He makes futuristic hip hop fired up with political anger, compassion and a desire to communicate something real about this very moment in time in ways that sound like they could only have been made right here and right now. But given that he enjoys the kind of popular support that delivers number one singles and albums, I don’t suppose it matters to Plan B whether the panel who pontificate over the Mercury prize recognise his relevance or not.
-Neil McCormick for The Telegraph
