There have been a few baubles dished out this week, some shiny and some distinctly tatty, and I have to confess that from a barely-interested outsider’s perspective, it’s been pretty funny.

Even the Mercury Prize result, which I was kinda disappointed in because my pal didn’t win, created all sorts of comedy on Twitter and elsewhere.  The best was probably The Pop Cop’s hilarious rant about the Scottish New Music Awards.

Now, I wasn’t there, but looking at the results alone, they must have been pretty fucking hilarious.  Sandy Thom?  Record of the year something which hasn’t even been released yet? Best covers band? Sandy Thom?

Not having attended I have no idea how cringeworthy or awful it might actually have been in reality, but it is only the first year, and nothing of this sort is going to be perfect the first time around, so they do deserve a bit of slack.  But any new music award whose ceremony is compered by some X-Factor reject has at least one or two fundamental questions to be asked about it.

As for the Mercury Prize, well, as I freely admitted on Twitter in amongst all the hubbub, I wanted King Creosote to win for two reasons.  Firstly, he is a pal.  Not a close pal, but a pal nevertheless, and a nice guy.  And secondly, it’s pretty much the only album on that list that I know all that well.  You see what I mean by how little interest I actually had in any of these awards?

The chat after the Mercury Prize was interesting, some people accepted the result with resignation, some with good grace, and others with outrage at the corruption or ineptitude of the judges.  Mike Diver wrote a really good piece about it all on the BBC website, actually, pointing out that something as artistically focussed as the Mercury Prize is really good for music irrespective of your opinion on the final winner.

The arguments about the winner, the debate about the shortlist, the countless alternative lists, the bafflement at some of the nominations – all of this generates massive interest in music.  Actual interest too, and proper engagement in the art, rather than the tawdry commercialism and cultural vaccuum of the Brits. For example, I am now going to make an effort to see if my historical ambivalence towards PJ Harvey actually holds up under closer scrutiny

He wasn’t quite right about the entry process though, and inaccurately trivialised how prohibitive the submission costs are for small labels.  The £200 he quotes (it was £500 last time I was invited to submit anything) is a bargain for all the publicity a Mercury nomination generates, but it is a little more considerable when you consider the statistical likelihood of actually achieving that nomination.

£500 and a large pile of actual albums for the judges to listen to is a lot of money to throw down the drain on the off-chance, especially if you have a few releases that year which you might wish to nominate. Even at £200 I would think twice about it, depending on how many albums I had to nominate for that year, but then again we are a tiny, tiny label and probably a wee way away from seriously having to worry about this sort of shit.

In terms of the actual decision, though, the combination of the Scottish New Music Awards and the Mercury Prize in the same week highlights the problem with taking any of this shit seriously at all.  These awards are decided by either large or small groups of people, public vote or committee decision.

When it’s a small group of people then it’s basically some random yahoo passing judgement on your work, and why the fuck would you care what some random asshole thinks of your shit?  Even if one of my heroes thought the music we released was shite, would that bother me?  Of course it wouldn’t, I’d just file their opinions under ‘not interesting’ and get right back on with it.

But if you broaden these things away from an exclusive cabal of decision makers then you get the situation Diver discusses in his article: of course the Mercury Prize is kinda populist – it’s decided by committee, and anything really obscure and challenging is unlikely to attract the attention of more than a couple of people, making it highly unlikely that it will be nominated. I fucking hate 99% of music which is actually properly popular, so why would populism be a criterion on which I would ever judge my own work?  It isn’t, so fuck it.

So either way you lose: small numbers of people make decisions which are too subjective, and if you try and negate that by making it more democratic then you just end up with predictable populist tripe.

The only reason that I can think of that we don’t discard this whole bollocks and walk away altogether is that almost none of us can resist the little teeny-tiny thrill of piqued vanity when we are either nominated or agree wholeheartedly with a nomination.  We are being validated one way or another, either for being right or for being awesome, and most of us really can’t resist that, so award ceremonies will persist and probably even proliferate for the foreseeable future.

‘You know that new girl?  She’s such a stuck-up bitch, and she’s not even all that pretty, and she’s so dumb, did you hear what she…”
“You don’t like her?  She told me she thought you were kinda cute.”
“…what she said in English toda… wait, what, she said I was cute?”

 Yeah, you know what, me neither.  I don’t know why I even bothered checking.  PJ Harvey, something urban, something ethnic, something epic, and snoozzzzzzzze…

Although, if you thought I was writing this post with the express purpose of mocking, or even particularly criticising the Mercury Prize then you’d be wrong. Actually, I am just amazed by how out of touch with mainstream music I am becoming.

Before I even started writing about music I remember seeing the Mercury nominees compilation CDs in shops, thinking I was going to like them and then not really managing to.  The Mercurys suffer from that eternal problem of trying to be underground yet accessible, and of trying to be cross-genre enough to represent all of British music, and yet also in-depth enough to make interesting picks.

In other words I am not going to slag the nominations off, because they are spread too thin, and it is therefore an impossible job to pick them. But here they are, if you are interested.

Adele – 21
Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi
Elbow – Build a Rocket Boys!
Everything Everything – Man Alive
Ghostpoet – Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam
Gwilym Simcock - Good Days at Schloss Elmau
James Blake – James Blake
Katy B – On a Mission
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine
Metronomy – The English Riviera
PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
Tinie Tempah – Disc-Overy

When I started writing this blog I reviewed albums I found out about in Uncut, Word and Mojo and bought in HMV or on Amazon. I have drifted from that to the extent that I have only actually heard two of the albums on that list.  And only think one of them is much cop.

Let’s be absolutely honest, it costs £500 to even take part.  That was basically equal to the entirety of what we spent on PR on the last Meursault album, and when our distributor suggested entering it, I didn’t really think it was a worthwhile use of our money – never mind the whole pile of free albums you have to donate to the committee for them to actually listen to.

They don’t allow albums without a UPC (barcode) to enter either, which rules out a large number of my favourite albums of the last year.  I can see why they do it, because otherwise they’d be even more inundated than they presumably already are (although the £500 pay-to-play sticks in my craw just a little).

They might, although I hope not, make the entirely specious claim that these costs guarantee a certain minimal level of quality, but the more involved I get with the world of music the more obvious it becomes that that is a completely ridiculous claim.  Most of the shit in my inbox comes from people with budgets and barcodes, not those without. I’ve had promo emails from a few of those bands – James Blake, Everything Everything, Metronomy, P.J. Harvey – and they just aren’t very good, so the quality argument is balls.

When you also factor in my indifference to the albums by Twitter heroes Wild Beasts and The Horrors I just think that, basically, writing this blog has made my music taste so obscure I barely have any relationship with the world of the Mercury Prize anymore. This isn’t an ‘oh, you wouldn’t get it’ kind of hipster boast, either.  In actual fact it’s harmful to what I do.

Publications, internet-based or otherwise, have their own audiences, but that’s only a small part of the story.  A large bulk of our audience comes from the bands themselves. When I write about popular bands, their audience, not necessarily mine, turns up to read it.   When I did that session with Mumford and Sons a year or so ago, it immediately became my most viewed session, which is no surprise.  What was a surprise, though, was that it didn’t seem to really increase the appetite for the rest of the sessions.  Whilst their videos may have thousands and thousands of views, we still have a good few session videos with twenty or thirty views.

Similarly, declining interest in mainstream bands is making Song, by Toad increasingly niche, which means the visibility of the site and the awareness of the label and the bands we work with will probably suffer accordingly.  There’s only so much music you can listen to though, and honestly I think I prefer the site this way.

There are other people who can listen to all the Mercury Prize nominees, or particularly care about the lineup at Latitude, or even bother reading Pitchfork.  It’s not really for me though.  I know it’s making everything I do an awful lot less ‘relevant’, but I am happy enough with that.

/needlessnavelgazing

Firstly, well done to Elbow for winning the Mercury Prize. I tend to slag off the Mercury Prize a little bit, largely due to the appearance of tokenism (one for black people, one for intellectuals, one obscure one to make us look clever) but also because I often just don’t like many of the bands very much. The accusation of tokenism is neatly refuted by one of the judges in this nice little article in the Guardian, and an award dominated by my narrow taste would be dull as shit for everyone, so I suppose I should back off a little. At least it’s not the frothing, corporate nonsense of the NME awards or the joyless fogeyism of Q.

Anyway, whilst I acknowledge that it is somewhat hypocritical to crticise an award and then profess yourself pleased for the winners, I feel I really have to congratulate Elbow. If you listen to Guy Garvey on 6Music or go to any of the Elbow shows they really do seem to come across as a really nice bunch of lads, so it’s extremely good news in that respect. From a musical point of view it’s nice too. They were supposed to be the Next Big Thing when they released Asleep in the Back, but that hasn’t quite happened. They slipped a little, in my view, with Cast of Thousands, but between those two, Leaders of the Free World and the album for which they won the award, Seldom Seen Kid, they have put together a pretty consistently impressive collection of records.

A great band, and a bloody good result. Pimm’s all round.

Elbow – The Fix (Nice ironic choice, this one)
Elbow – Mexican Standoff

Secondly, Tennents Mutual have announced an amazing series of gigs throughout Scotland, all coming up over the next few months. They’ve done it by some slightly weird voting system which has had a couple of really notable results. Firstly, the venues are spread far and wide which is – although I am not all that delighted, living in Edinburgh – a great thing for Scotland and Scottish music as a whole. If you live in Dumfries, for example, when do you ever get to see a decent gig? The other thing that is brilliant is the pairing of established acts like King Creosote and Malcolm Middleton with up and comers Withered Hand and Rob St. John.

Here’s a sample lineup: Fort William, BA Club: King Creosote, The Pictish Trail, Chris ‘Beans’ Geddes (Belle & Sebastian).
Or how about this one: Ayr, Town Hall: Glasvegas, Laura Marling, Malcolm Middleton. Ayr fucking Town Hall? Blimey!
And congratulations to some friends of Toad for landing these slots:
Inverness, Ironworks: Teenage Fanclub, King Creosote, Rob St John.
Stirling, Tolbooth: Malcolm Middleton, Withered Hand.
Fat Sams, Dundee: Malcolm Middleton, Los Campesinos, Eagleowl.
Glasgow, CCA: James Murphy, Findo Gask, Kid Canaveral, Chris ‘Beans’ Geddes (Belle & Sebastian), David Barbarossa.

I have to confess I lost interest a little in Tennents Mutual due to the fact that from the outside very little seemed to be happening, and I saw too many uninspiring bands at the very top of the list – Muse, eck! Mob rule doesn’t always produce the best results. The fact that a lot of the very top bands weren’t up for it has resulted in a much better festival though, as far as I am concerned, and I love the lineups and the fact that they are in slightly less-travelled places.

Tennents interest me actually. They have sponsored some amazing things in Scotland – the Versacoustic gigs, the previously excellent T on the Fringe and the much-missed Triptych – but this year’s Edge Festival lineup was woefully thin, despite a few last minute gambits that did up the quality right at the death. I don’t know how much Tennents themselves have to do with the nature of the things they end up being involved with but all of the aforementioned stuff is bloody excellent. Triptych and Versacoustic were particularly interesting because it required genuine musical enthusiasm and knowledge to put together those kind of shows, and it’s rarer than purple fucking snow that corporate sponsorship embraces something so esoteric, eschewing the NME dross in favour of really making the effort to bring new and interesting things to people. Those shows actually took real risks in the name of helping people to broaden their horizons, and it’s a real shame they’re gone. Here’s hoping The Edge Festival can get its act together in future and that the excellent work of Triptych isn’t gone forever.

Malcolm Middleton – Superhero Songwriter
King Creosote – A Month of Firsts
Withered Hand – I Am Nothing

The shortlist is a little depressing.  I remember when the Mercurys were not just a Radio 1 playlist on a really shit day at work.  To be entirely fair to them, there are a couple of pretty decent picks, but they are somewhat drowned out by the stampede of abysmal cuntery from the likes of Britain’s very own walking ear infection, Amy Winehouse, and her depressingly uninspiring ilk.

Arctic Monkeys – Favourite Worst Nightmare – Just not a very good album.  There are some good bits, some cracking lyrics and some great riffs.  But this record is patchy at best, and they are verging dangerously close to becoming the new Oasis.
Dizzee Rascal – Maths and English – Token music for Blicks (please imagine heavy South African accent when pronouncing this).
The View – Hats Off to the Buskers – Token music for complete and utter cunts.
Bat For Lashes – Fur and Gold – This is not new, and it is shit.  Imagine a super-group made up of the best bits of Bjork, the best bits of Belly and the best bits of Portishead.  Then imagine the leftovers.  This is them.
Klaxons – Myths of the Near Future – Myths of Tolerability, more like. Nu-rave.  Gosh yes, dance music with a bit of guitars is definitely a brand new genre, never heard of before and entirely justifying its own classification and hysterical shrieking about the second coming.  Is this type of music not covered by the term ‘shit’ already?
Jamie T – Panic Prevention – Anyone using initials in this manner is a twat.  Fucking grow up.  He may not be an irritating mockney twat, but with a handle like that he certainly bloody well sounds like one.
The Young Knives – Voices of Animals and Men – This album is really so medium I can’t even hate it.  In fact I can barely be arsed typing this.  This is a prize, you fuckwits, not just a pat on the back for turning up.
Maps – We Can Create
Fionn Regan – The End of History – The inclusion of these two gives me a little hope not everything is turning into the NME Awards of Empty Indie Hysteria.
Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford – Basquiat Strings – If you look, there’s always a nominee at the Mercurys designed to show just how cultured, obscure and judicious the panel are.  They also act like some token ‘intellectual’ inclusion to demonstrate the open-minded and inclusive nature of the awards that, much like the token ‘urban’ nominee, nevertheless completely fails to give the impression that anyone on the panel actually ever listens to either record.
Amy Winehouse – Back to Black – If there was an award for Punchably Unbearable Self-Obsessed Twattery it would probably have to be named after this raggedy old trout.  If you ever wanted to imagine what a sexually transmitted disease looked like in human form, you couldn’t go too far wrong if you directed someone to a picture of The Winehouse.  Provided you warned them that the emotional damage caused by gazing on her skeletal figure, gurning puss and avian-beaked visage was likely to require years of therapy to expunge, of course.  A one-woman erection assassin.
New Young Pony Club – Fantastic Playroom – Another decent choice.  Not my flavour exactly, but at least a little interesting.

So, I don’t know, what do you think?  Dross like Bat For Lashes, The View and Jamie T and the rather dubious selection of the Arctic Monkeys make it look a bit like a list put together on autopilot, without any real thought applied.  On the other hand, there are at least a couple of interesting choices.  NME be shamed, you have been out-rock ‘n’ rolled by the Mercury Prize!

Maps – You Don’t Know Her Name[audio http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/3/28/933060/Maps-YouDontKnowHerName.mp3]
New Young Pony Club – Fan[audio http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/3/28/933060/NewYoungPonyClub-Fan.mp3]
Fionn Regan – Put a Penny in the Slot[audio http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/3/28/933060/FionnRegan-PutaPennyintheSlot.mp3]
Arctic Monkeys – Put Your Dukes Up John[audio http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/3/28/933060/TheArcticMonkeys-PutYourDukesUpJohn.mp3]

A couple of mp3 files pinched from The Pelican’s Perch and Music For Kids Who Can’t Read Good.  Sorry lads, hope you don’t mind!