Mercury Nominations 2008

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Downloads might be killing off the album, but the Mercury dudes are carrying on regardless. This year's nominations are below, but do you poptimist folks actually listen to this sort of thing?

[Poll #1227631]

Ones for the comments box:
- of the albums above that you haven't heard yet, which would you like to investigate further?
- do you think this is a fair representation of British Music in 2008?
- is this better or worse than last year's bunch?

"Scouting for Girls are like the sound of Satan's scrotum emptying. They're abysmal."

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Surprised no one posted this yet-

Does the world need another indie band?

The short version of that article is that no one really knows who buys Scouting For Girls records. It is quite marvellously vehement though if you, like me, spend a mystifyingly large amount of your time trying to think of a new way of saying 'this is a shit indie single.' Not sure it goes far enough for me on some aspects (the bit with some bloke talking about the wonder of some kids dancing to 80s/90s indie as though this makes them genii is particular obnoxious) but does contain the quote from this subject line.

Edit: I might add, this isn't a 'HAR LOOK ALL INDIE ARE CRAP' post. I think the article's interesting because we've been talking about how these instantly charting indie bands are the new throwaway boy/girlband for awhile, particularly this week and although this is a smug indie person talking about it from a smug indie perspective, it's surprisingly on-the-money in a lot of places. It might be worth asking, if it's not a totally overwrung question that ultimate ends up with 'THE MAN' as the answer, why you think these particular little trends of throwaway bands/groups start and what you personally think brought on this particular glut of awful?

Also, I really cannot emphasise enough that I have had to review The Enemy three times in the last year.