By the end of the day, there will probably be hundreds a plethora of posts (that’s the collective noun, right?) about this year’s Mercury Music Award nominations. I’ll admit, up until now I’ve been a bit ignorant in my approach to the award, often making snap decisions and forming opinions with little to no grounding.

This year, I’ve given myself a hypothetical slap on the wrist and, since I’ve got this blog up and running, am going to do a little bit of blogging about the albums. Just so I can y’know, make myself actually listen to the damn things this year. Besides, there are some corkers on there. I’ve even set up a separate category for it…(I’ve been doing a bit of housekeeping today and generally tidying up my blog. Should probably do the same with my desk…) 

The general consensus on my twitter feed, which seems to have become something of a be-all and end-all of all opinions is a BIG THUMBS UP to Mercury. Of course, there are always a few contentions points when someone’s favourite album isn’t nominated but hell. It seems like a pretty varied list, and if everyone’s favourite album was nominated…well, every album that had been released this year would probably feature on the list. And that just wouldn’t be practical now, would it?

In case you’ve somehow missed the memo, here are the nominations:

Alt-J ‘An Awesome Wave’
Ben Howard ‘Every Kingdom’
Django Django ‘Django Django’
Field Music ‘Plumb’
Jessie Ware ‘Devotion’
Lianne La Havas ‘Is Your Love Big Enough?’
Michael Kiwanuka ‘Home Again’
The Maccabees ‘Given to the Wild’
Plan B ‘Ill Manors’
Richard Hawley ‘Standing at the Sky’s Edge’
Roller Trio ‘Roller Trio’
Sam Lee ‘Ground of its Own’

And, if for any reason you don’t know what on earth it is I’ve been rambling on about for the past 311 words (thank you, wordpress word count…), clicking –> HERE <– will take you to the mercury prize website. Hooray!