Prize losers

At Summer Sundae last month it seemed you could barely move for Mercury Music Prize nominees: Richard Hawley on the Friday, Isobel Campbell on the Saturday, Guillemots on the Sunday. All three were ultimately disappointed by Tuesday night's verdict (and deprived of the resulting spike in sales), Sheffield scamps Arctic Monkeys named as winners for the debut Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not.

I've not heard the Hawley and Guillemots albums (or Arctic Monkeys, for that matter), but it's a good thing that Campbell's Ballad Of The Broken Seas didn't triumph. Not that it's a bad album - far from it. It's currently getting a lot of play here at SWSL Towers. The issue is over the fact that it was rebranded as a Campbell solo album because only British artists are eligible for the Prize, when in fact it's very much work of Campbell and American Mark Lanegan. Campbell may have written all but two of the songs, but the former Screaming Trees and sometime Queens Of The Stone Age man is in many ways the more dominant of the two voices (and not just because his is male).

Campbell is now set to follow Ballad Of The Broken Seas with a solo album proper, Milkwhite Sheets, out towards the end of next month.