Mercury Prize nominees surprise pundits

Several bands and solo acts expected to be nominated today for the 2009 Mercury music prize – including Doves, White Lies and the BBC's Sound of 2009 winner Little Boots - have been snubbed by the judges. Instead, an eclectic range of new acts, chart-toppers and unknowns have been nominated, causing surprise among industry pundits.
 
Those in the running to win 2009's best album prize include the London electropop duo La Roux, Scottish indie band Glasvegas, and Florence Welch's Florence and the Machine (above), who won the Brit Awards 2009 Critics' Choice award in February.

Bat for Lashes, fronted by Natasha Khan, and rock band Kasabian are also hotly tipped to take the prize. Folk group Sweet Billy Pilgrim and art-rock trio the Invisible are among the lesser-known acts to make the list.
 
The £20,000 Mercury prize will be announced on September 8. Previous winners include Elbow, Dizzee Rascal and the Arctic Monkeys.

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING
Neil McCormick, Daily Telegraph: "There is an amorphous quality to the artists on this year’s Mercury list. With the exception of passionate Scot’s noise rockers Glasvegas and brashly retro pop synth duo La Roux, the other 10 nominees show little regard for genre distinction, creating music that blurs across boundaries... There is much discussion about how the internet is changing music but this, is surely its most positive effect: the death of genre."

Luke Lewis, NME: "Debating the list has become one of the quirks of British cultural life, along with predicting the Christmas Number One, or predicting whether or not it will piss it down at Glastonbury. And, like those things, part of the fun is that the nominations (although rarely the ultimate result) are so predictable. Of course Friendly Fires and The Horrors are in there - they were the most critically acclaimed 'indie' releases of the past year." ·