Scottish Album of the Year shortlist: An exciting array of homegrown talent

Whenever any kind of awards shortlist is announced, it’s almost traditional for the howls of disapproval to drown out the congratulatory comments.

Such is the case every year the Mercury Music Prize unveils its choice of the UK and Ireland’s finest (read: most critically acclaimed) albums.

Last year the inclusion of Diamond Mine on the Mercury shortlist, which features the lyricism of Fife singer-songwriter King Creosote and the music of Jon Hopkins, was welcomed north of the border as a sign that the London-centric music business hadn’t completely forgotten about the far-flung corners of the British Isles.

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On the other hand, there was tangible disappointment over the fact that another collaboration, Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat’s exquisitely nuanced Everything’s Getting Older, did not make the cut.

But that album, along with Diamond Mine, will surely be one of the favourites to win the inaugural Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award, which announced its own ten-strong shortlist today.

Giving the lie to anyone who might have questioned whether the Scottish music industry is prolific enough to sustain its own alternative to the Mercurys, the first SAY shortlist is a convincing portrayal of a thriving creative scene.

Whittled down to an initial 20 albums by a 100-strong group of well-informed industry ‘nominators’, a panel of judges have now distilled this again to produce the definitive shortlist - with the help of a one-day public vote which held sway over one placing.

But is it definitive? Well it’s certainly a diverse billing, which echoes the open-minded – and at times, let’s face it, tokenistic - Mercury approach.

So we find bands who have yet to break into the mainstream (although they have been tipped by The Scotsman’s Radar blog) such as Happy Particles, Remember Remember and Conquering Animal Sound in contention to be crowned Scotland’s best album of last year. What this trio share is their tireless ambition to readjust and reform musical conventions.

Electronic talent is part of their appeal, but no-one could match Rustie in this particular field. The Warp-signed producer, who graduated from Glasgow’s LuckyMe arts collective, showcased his own wildly experimental take on RnB-laced dance music with last year’s Glass Swords.

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Mogwai is the band with the widest international recognition on the list, but whether the judges decide that last year’s Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, their seventh studio album, is the kind of winner to set pulses racing is another matter.

At the more established yet still marginal end of the spectrum are respected jazz saxophonist and composer Tommy Smith and Glaswegian dub specialists and festival favourites Mungo’s Hi Fi.

Twin Atlantic, meanwhile, an alt-rock quartet with a burgeoning fanbase, represent the younger demographic, and so it’s perhaps little surprise to learn that they won through in the online vote earlier this week.

Music awards are notoriously tricky to get right, and there have been several attempts at a ‘Scottish Mercury’ which have been rightly derided. But the SAY Award seems to be succeeding where others have failed.

This is most likely down to its inclusive attempt to embrace all levels of the Scottish music and artistic community from unsigned bands to seasoned professionals, with a focus firmly on quality over commercialism, an array of heavyweight prizes and an impressive digital operation to boot.

And just listen to that backlash. Hardly a peep.

• The winning album will be announced at a ceremony at Glasgow Film City on Tuesday 19th June, with a grand prize of £20,000. The nine runners-up will each receive £1,000.

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