Image credit: @Raph_PH
The Mercury Prize is back, and a new album will be crowned as the UK and Ireland’s best in Newcastle on Thursday 16 October. To celebrate this year’s competition, Undertone listened to all 12 nominated albums. Which is the best, and which has the best shot at winning? The verdict is in…
12. Martin Carthy: Transform Me Then Into A Fish
Martin Carthy may be a mainstay of the British folk scene, but his 19th studio album still feels like this year’s wildcard choice. At 84, he is the oldest nominee in the Prize’s history, and will make an entertaining foil to baby-faced 24-year-old PinkPantheress on the night. Whilst PinkPantheress’s record is supremely trendy mid-2020s pop, Transform Me Then Into A Fish could hardly be more traditional, with Carthy presenting timeworn folk tunes with little more than an acoustic guitar and his own voice. Nearly 60 years have passed since Carthy’s spritely debut record, and time has had its effects on his voice, which sounds either rich and charismatic or limited and pitchy depending on your disposition (my thoughts lean towards the latter). His guitar playing feels pedestrian, treading a fine line between winningly authentic imperfections and simply shoddy. A sitar adds an intriguing whiff of Indian classical music to many of the tunes, but too often the instrument merely mimics the melody rather than offering any frisson of cosmic transcendence. The seven-minute long poem The Famous Flower Of Serving Men, performed without any instruments or singing at all, is a bold but dubious inclusion (is it even music?) that disposes of the album’s precious little momentum. Carthy is undoubtedly a deeply talented and influential musician (he taught Bob Dylan, for goodness sake!), but this nomination seems awarded more out of admiration for his long and well-respected career than a reflection of Transform Me Then Into A Fish’s slender merits.
What’s the highlight? Carthy’s daughter Eliza provides some welcome vim and vigour with her fiddle playing on The Handsome Cabin Boy, and you could argue A-Begging I Will Go has a new resonance in our late-capitalist world. Don’t be fooled into thinking that perhaps the most beloved and famous English folk song of all, Scarborough Fair, will be anything other than a lifeless dirge.
Will it win? The industry’s respect for Carthy has already helped him onto the nominations list, but surely it can’t power him all the way to victory. Folk’s time at the Mercury Prize will come – just not this year.
11. Pa Salieu: Afrikan Alien
It’s been something of an off year for rap in the UK and Ireland – a genre that tends to perform well at the Mercury Prize, with Little Simz and Dave both recent winners – and Pa Salieu finds himself as this year’s only hip hop candidate. Afrikan Alien‘s title track starts ambitiously enough by imagining Black people as originating from a faraway “hostile planet” (or at least implying that this is how Britain treats Black people), but Salieu’s political commentary lacks detail, making easy statements about how a vague “they” treat the poor (“unfairly”) and how poverty is “disgusting”. He sounds more at home on the braggadocious trap beat of Ya Zee (albeit somewhat queasily celebrating his release from 21 months in prison after being charged with violent disorder), or on peppy Afrobeats number Soda. But, beyond the obvious musical influences of African rap on almost all of these tracks, Salieu does little to develop his thin commentary on race relations; a new Gambian-British To Pimp a Butterfly this is not. His ambition finally breaks through on the strings-blessed closer YGF, but by then this album is already in its closing stages after an insubstantial 27 minutes. A vintage year in British hip hop 2025 has not been, but listening to Afrikan Alien it’s hard to ignore Little Simz or Obongjayar, two of Salieu’s contemporaries who have both recently released albums vastly more innovative and enthralling than this one.
What’s the highlight? Allergy is my pick. Sure, Salieu’s chorus isn’t much to write home about (lyrics: “allergy, allergy, allergy, allergy…”), but focus instead on the sumptuous bass line, splashes of horns and fascinating, swinging percussion.
Will it win? I’ll eat my pricey Sony headphones if it does. Afrikan Alien isn’t even the best hip hop album of the year, let alone the best album in this list.
10. Emma-Jean Thackray: Weirdo
Once lumped together with the much vaunted UK jazz resurgence of the early 2020s – already a broad church with fuzzy boundaries – Emma-Jean Thackray is increasingly carving out a niche of her own with her funky, loop-pedal-powered bedroom pop. Autistic, with ADHD and a history of depression, Weirdo deals with society’s treatment of Thackray as an outcast yet, despite the often bleak lyrics, the prevailing mood of Weirdo is danceable joy – see the Afrobeat-inflected stomper Save Me, the cheering jazz fusion of Tofu or closer Thank You For The Day, an uplifting slice of soul that wouldn’t sound too out of place closing an ABBA record. Thackray is often referred to as a musical polymath, and indeed the list of credits on Weirdo makes for repetitive reading: bass guitar by Thackray, drums by Thackray, trombone by Thackray, trumpet by Thackray, congas by Thackray, flugelhorn by Thackray… you get the gist. It’s not the only thing about Weirdo that’s repetitive – being a one woman show necessitates heavy use of the loop pedal and repetitive song structures, and even Thackray’s better grooves (the distorted, frugging bass of Maybe Nowhere; the Herbie Hancock-esque funk of Black Hole) tend to outstay their welcomes. Her lyrics only occasionally develop further than stating the song’s main focus and repeating it over and over. At 19 tracks and nearly an hour long, surely Weirdo could have benefitted from a prune in the editing stage – besides, do we really need a song about how much Thackray wants to make Fried Rice? Thackray’s extraordinary ability to be everything in Weirdo – composer, mixer, producer, entire jazz fusion band – is therefore both this album’s greatest strength and crucial weakness. Sometimes a second opinion to rein in your ambition a little is no bad thing.
What’s the highlight? Save Me was plenty groovy enough to get some of the audience out of their seats and dancing when I caught Thackray supporting Kamasi Washington at the Glasshouse last year. Give it a play and watch those hips take on a life of their own.
Will it win? I don’t think so – Weirdo’s tracklist is surely too bloated to sufficiently win over the judges, and Joe Webb’s much brisker and more daring record Hamstrings & Hurricanes is the superior jazz record on the list.
9. FKA twigs: EUSEXUA
The cultural dust is still settling from the crash landing of Charli xcx’s BRAT last year, but one obvious consequence is this FKA twigs album. Of course, like Charli, twigs has been crafting left-field electronic music for many years, but something about the club-centric beats and moments of radical vulnerability on EUSEXUA makes it feel like a clear successor to Charli’s cultural juggernaut. Whilst BRAT focussed on the artist’s uncomfortable reckoning with fame, twigs turns her attention to sexuality with laser precision across 11 thoughtfully crafted electronic compositions. Her slinky synths and chest-rattling drum machines are a perfect match to the genre, sonically plonking the listener into the centre of a sweaty, intimate nightclub whether they like it or not. Indeed, few pop albums today succeed at discussing sex so viscerally and with such nuance; on the oppressive, spliced percussion of Drums of Death is something to be both desired and mortally feared, whilst Sticky strikingly tears back the façade to reveal a lonely soul simply looking for a connection. Perfect Stranger is about the closest we get to a conventional big pop single, and especially in it’s latter stages EUSEXUA can begin to feel a little too cerebral given the immediacy of its subject matter, especially in the dense static hum of penultimate track 24hr Dog. Still, this is a smart, engaging listen, packed with a sonic and thematic ambition very few of twigs’ contemporaries can match – Charli excluded.
What’s the highlight? Nothing tops the shock factor of Sticky, a barebones piano ballad that eventually erupts into a perfect storm of electronics and distortion. It’s twigs at her gloriously idiosyncratic best.
Will it win? Along with Jacob Alon’s In Limerence, this is my dark horse. If BRAT was simply too popular, so widely beloved an album to take its rightful victory last year, perhaps this slightly less popular, slightly less beloved experimental dance-pop album will be just the ticket.
8. PinkPantheress: Fancy That
PinkPantheress may only be 24, but her first Mercury nomination has been a long time coming. There’s been buzz around her music since she was still anonymously releasing music from her laptop, finding an early hit in the irresistible Just for Me, a humble pop ditty that heralded a new era of nostalgia for homespun Y2K pop. Since then, she’s been perfecting her retro songcraft and each record (2021’s to hell with it, 2023’s Heaven knows) have shown steady improvements leading up to Fancy That, her most concise and tightly written release to date. That said, there’s a thin line between concise and scant, and at just over 20 minutes long Fancy That’s inclusion in such a prestigious list might raise some eyebrows. There’s no room for lulls in an album of this size, but luckily PinkPantheress is not in the business of self-indulgent ballads. Instead, she peppers the track list with slickly produced house tracks, one infectious beat dissolving seamlessly into another. Leading the charge is Illegal, a hit with a genuinely claim to the title of 2025’s ‘Song of the Summer’, albeit in a year with very little competition. Stars wouldn’t sound out of place in any hip nightclub this side of the year 2000, whilst Noises is underscored by feverish drum ‘n bass percussion. Stateside is another highlight, functioning as a vague update of Estelle’s club staple American Boy, although it’s hard to get past the fact that not song here ventures beyond the three minute mark. Fancy That is an atypically astute pop record, but there’s no escaping that plenty other albums offer on this list offer vastly more ambition and variety.
What’s the highlight? Triumphant closing number Romeo is one of the most uplifting love songs Victoria Walker has written to date, the melodramatic strings that colour the whole album finally coming into their own over a delectable vocal hook.
Will it win? Fancy That, for some a 20-minute piece of musical fluff which is the height of Gen Z superficiality, would certainly cause some sniffy outrage at The Times if it did. For the judges to choose the shortest-ever nominated work as this year’s winner would be a bold move, and one I just can’t see happening.
7. Pulp: More
With the exception of a certain brother duo from Manchester, Pulp’s reformation and first new album in 24 years has been arguably the biggest UK music story of the year. If the task was to find a way to pad out the hits in the band’s live shows with something fresh, Pulp have outdone themselves. There’s little in More that’s likely to convert anyone who’s already decided they don’t like the influential Britpop group, but for everyone else all the usual Pulp appeals are present and correct – chiefly Jarvis Cocker’s witty and absurd lyrics and chatty delivery, plus jaunty disco diversions and patches of boozy indie rock. It turns out Cocker is just as capable at illuminating the complexities of romance at 61 as he was at 30. Tina’s yearning for a past romance is made all the more potent by a 40 year time gap, whilst eerie Background Noise sees Cocker contemplating the breakdown of a marriage in a shopping centre. There’s plenty of less obvious signs of maturity in More too – the patience shown in deeply lovely ballad The Hymn of the North; the quasi-spiritual wisdom on display in soulful roof-raiser Got to Have Love. Pulp’s golden age may have fizzled out unceremoniously at the turn of the millennium, but More indicates Cocker and co still have bucket loads of well-earned confidence.
What’s the highlight? It’s the plodding indie chug of Grown Ups that perhaps sounds most like Pulp’s Britpop classics of yore, bolstered by Cocker’s thoughtful and funny storytelling about what it means to grow up, and whether we should even strive to ‘grow up’ in the first place.
Will it win? They’ve already won it in 1996 for Different Class (and, as many still argue, probably should have won two years earlier for His ‘n’ Hers), so who’s to say Pulp can’t do it again? More does indeed tick a lot of boxes with its catchy yet intricately crafted songs, but I don’t think this record received quite the level of widespread critical acclaim required to win the prize this year.
6. Wolf Alice: The Clearing
Pulp aren’t the only band here who are no strangers to the Mercury Prize limelight. Seven years have passed since Ellie Rowsell was belting out Don’t Delete The Kisses at the 2018 awards show before sweeping up the trophy for the band’s cult classic album Visions of a Life. The Wolf Alice flame hasn’t dimmed one bit since that night, as evidenced by their lauded Glastonbury performance last summer, and The Clearing sees the band pivot from woozy, lovestruck alt rock to warm and intricate soft rock, the trademark rough edges in Rowsell’s voice smoothed out by mellifluous vocal harmonies and lilting instrumentals. That’s not to say The Clearing is devoid of fiery moments – lead single Bloom Baby Bloom is a rambunctious slice of piano rock, whilst Rowsell properly lets loose on the vocals on breezy White Horses. For me most part, though, this is Wolf Alice sounding lovelier than we’ve ever heard them before. It’s both The Clearing’s biggest strength and Achilles’ heel. We get plenty of heartfelt moments – the adorable ode to female friendship that is Just Two Girls, the soothing country twang of Leaning Against the Wall – but elsewhere you sense that this formerly thrilling hard rock band are somewhat overlooking their capacities for full-blown catharsis. Later tracks like Safe in the World and Midnight Song come and go like a gentle breeze, but never garrotte you by the throat with raw emotional urgency the same way Wolf Alice’s greatest songs do. As Rowsell once sang on their gloriously bawdy punk number Play the Greatest Hits from a previous era of Wolf Alice, it just isn’t loud enough.
What’s the highlight? Look no further than Bread Butter Tea Sugar, this record’s most ambitious soft rock number which starts off sounding like the Carpenters’ Close to You but soon mutates into a rollicking rock ‘n’ roll anthem. It’s got the lot: soaring strings, knotty vocal harmonies, and not one but two gratuitous guitar solos. Listen to it and bask in the pure glee of it all.
Will it win? Wolf Alice are perennially well reviewed by critics – the question is whether they’re beloved enough to win for a second time. There’s an obvious comparison to make with fellow one-time winners Pulp and, as great as Wolf Alice and The Clearing is, they don’t yet have quite the same industry reverence and songwriting nous as Jarvis Cocker and co. Wolf Alice may well mature into a legendary band of Pulp’s stature and you suspect this will be far from their last Mercury Prize nomination, but my sense is that 2025 won’t quite be their year.
5. Joe Webb: Hamstrings & Hurricanes
The token jazz spot on the nominations list isn’t so token these days following Ezra Collective’s win in 2023, but this year it’s Joe Webb who is very clearly the one flying the flag for jazz at the Mercury, with a helping hand from jazz-adjacent Emma-Jean Thackray. Whilst some may quibble at the rough categorisation of afrobeat-influenced Ezra Collective as jazz, Hamstrings & Hurricanes will surely get the seal of approval from jazz heads – an old school piano trio album with no extra fluff or pop-friendly hooks. The challenge with such a traditional set up is to make the trio sound fresh and exciting and not just rehashes of the many great trios in the jazz annals. It’s a challenge Webb rises to immediately with the oddball melodic wanderings of Beth Yn Galw, swiftly followed by the scattered cluster chords on P.I.P, which preface a blistering bebop piano solo. For a pianist of his agility, there must be a temptation to pack the rest of the album with more technically dazzling bebop romps, but instead we get the studied introspection of the sparkling ballad 100 Years of Bill & Lil or the mesmeric Breuddwyd Cariad, which has echoes of Liszt’s Leibestraum, or perhaps a particularly colourful Chopin nocturne. Hamstrings & Hurricanes does lose some momentum in it’s closing stretch – Waiting in Eb is aimless filler, whilst the slovenly Newcastle Full Feel comes across stodgy and stagnant. But this is a genuinely trailblazing jazz album, not because it’s seeking the evolve the genre with new instruments or genre blends – you can look to a plethora of other contemporary jazz acts for that – but because Webb boldly takes the timeworn template of a piano trio and succeeds in putting his own stamp on it.
What’s the highlight? Drummer Sam Jesson takes the wheel for the fabulously expressive drum solo on Some Jesson, and the transition into Curve Ball is a marvel, the overwhelming assault of cymbals and drums eventually unveiling a full band romp through a thrilling new melodic salvo. This is what drum solos are for.
Will it win? Webb certainly has an outside shot at the trophy – Hamstrings & Hurricanes would be a worthy, tasteful winner – but it’s more likely that the lack of mainstream cultural impact and the relative inaccessibility of his knotty jazz solos might hold this album back.
4. Jacob Alon: In Limerence
A solid choice for dark horse at this year’s Mercury Prize is Jacob Alon, whose tender, folksy compositions won over a small but dedicated fanbase. In Limerence’s subtle love songs have lineage in the work of Jeff Buckley and Laura Marling, as well as deservedly in vogue Big Thief songwriter Adrienne Lenker, but it’s also an album coloured by Alon’s own lived experiences of queer love and loneliness. Showcased with a breathtaking performance on Later… With Jools Holland, where Alon performed bare footed and dressed in a suitably nymph-like golden skirt, this is a collection of delicacies that could well mature into a classic of its genre. The tone is uniformly tranquil and cosy, but this is only a monotonous album for those not listening closely enough. August Moon, for example, is a moonlit waltz that would be well suited to a wedding’s first dance had the poetic lyrics about a doomed love affair in Crete not read so heartbreakingly bleak. Don’t Fall Asleep’s chorus, meanwhile, is positively celestial, Alon’s voice rising and dissipating like smoke from an incense stick. That said, there are certainly moments where Alon isn’t doing quite enough to distinguish themself from Lenker and the swathes of other introspective singer-songwriters inspired by her musical alchemy, and Home Tapes, which foregrounds lo-fi audio clips perhaps of a young Alon, feels overlong and inconsequential. In Limerence is a quiet album and Alon is a quietly brilliant artist; you suspect it’s the sort of thing the rigorous music critics on the judging panel might end up warming to.
What’s the highlight? Fairy in a Bottle is truly exquisite. It’s both the quietest and most emotionally intense track on the record, Alon willing themselves to get lost in a self-delusional fantasy of love via a falsetto melody as fragile and precious as a hummingbird’s egg. “To be alone and dream of you / Is a ghost that I cling to,” Alon concludes, and it’s a testament to the power of their music that you end up feeling that yearning too, somewhere deep inside.
Will it win? Musically excellent yet not especially successful commercially, this is exactly the sort of album that does well at the Mercury. Cynics might point out the political boxes ticked by Alon’s queer identity, as well as being a Scottish artist in a competition historically dominated by Londoners, but if Alon wins it will be on the virtue of their gorgeous record. As great as In Limerence is, I expect the bigger and brighter artists on the list may garner more attention from the judges – but certainly don’t count Alon out.
3. CMAT: EURO-COUNTRY
“2023 was the year CMAT finally fulfilled her potential,” I overconfidently proclaimed on this blog after the release of CMAT’s second album Crazymad, For Me, which received widespread critical acclaim and the Irish singer-songwriter’s first Mercury Prize nod. It was a gross underestimation – CMAT’s potential just keeps getting fulfilled, and following the release of EURO-COUNTRY and a head-turning performance at this year’s Glastonbury, she is now firmly in the Premier League of pop, selling out arena shows across Europe and making waves in the US. I’m hardly the first to say that all that success is richly deserved – EURO-COUNTRY is simultaneously her silliest and most thoughtful record yet, matching fun Celtic twists on quintessentially American country music (her own “Euro-country” genre) with perceptive takes on financial decay in post-2008 Ireland (her “Euro country”, a coin which features prominently on the album cover). Come for the TikTok-viral bridge on Take a Sexy Picture of Me, the memeable lyrics of Jamie Oliver Petrol Station or vocal tour de force that is Running/Planning. Stay for the poignant characterisations of the Irish housing crisis (the title track) or the clever coupling of societal ills with personal ones (the deeply pained Lord, Let that Tesla Crash). If it all sounds a little too heavy, CMAT’s sparkling sense of humour is never far away – Tesla…’s mood is gloomy and self-deprecating, but not enough to stop CMAT from throwing in a joke about her ex’s seven-inch long… vinyl record. EURO-COUNTRY’s songs are long and dense, and perhaps the pace sags a little in a ballad-stuffed second half, but this is still a fabulous record that will reward repeat listens. She would make a thoroughly worthy Mercury Prize winner.
What’s the highlight? The album’s climactic number Running/Planning – a showstopper which CMAT described as “an abstracted view of societal pressure on women” – is the obvious choice, but I’m a bigger fan of the simpler pleasures of Tree Six Foive: a gloriously fun Celtic hoedown with a hook that will haunt you in your dreams.
Will it win? She’s got firm competition from her countrymen Fontaines D.C., but CMAT is my pick for this year’s most likely winner. EURO-COUNTRY should be fresher in the minds of the judges than Fontaines’ 13-month old Romance, and public discourse about her unique brilliance is more fervent that ever. With one previous Mercury nomination under her belt, winning the whole thing is surely the logical next step, right? We can only hope.
2. Fontaines D.C.: Romance
It feels like a long time has passed since Romance had its time in the cultural spotlight (Romance came out in August 2024; this year’s Mercury Prize submission period started a month earlier), but back in that famous summer for pop Romance went toe-to-toe with Charli xcx’s unimpeachable BRAT as the album of the moment, at least in British gen Z circles. Like Charli xcx’s opus, Romance sent Fontaines D.C. into stratospheric commercial success and defined them as a truly one-of-a-kind rock band: brooding guitar music primed for mosh pit anarchy, yet tempered by frontman Grian Chatten’s intense literary intellect. Indeed, if Romance has a weakness, it’s that Chatten occasionally lets his obsession with James Joyce get the better of him; Horseness Is The Whatness is as creakingly obtuse as its title suggests. More often, though, Fontaines pair Chatten’s mystifying lyrics with thrilling, visceral music. Starburster is simply one of the best singles anyone released in 2024. A Sgt. Pepper-style Mellotron synth rubs shoulders with a booming drum kit and minimalist, spacey guitars and the end result is one of the most innovative and exciting rock songs in recent memory. Elsewhere, Fontaines operate in a more familiar post-punk wheelhouse, but sound no less vital – criminally underrated Death Kink is a lurching party-starter in 6/4, whilst In The Modern World is a patient, strings-laden ballad that feels utterly epic.
What’s the highlight? If it’s not the aforementioned Starburster, then it’s surely Favourite, a stone-cold instant classic destined to be belted out by thousands of teary, beery lads during the band’s festival shows in the years and decades to come. At the end of a volatile album, Favourite sees Fontaines sand down their musical edges and deliver a straightforwardly glorious indie anthem via a single, beautiful guitar riff repeated ad nauseum. “If there was lightning in me / You know who it was for,” Chatten sings at the song’s emotional peak, which is about the closest you’ll get to a declaration of love in a Fontaines song. It’s the perfect surprise happy ending for this stormy LP.
Will it win? Quite possibly – an Irish act has never won the Mercury Prize, but with two outstanding Irish offerings this year in Fontaines and CMAT, it would feel like a snub if the crystal trophy doesn’t end up crossing the Irish Sea. Perhaps comparisons to the vaguely similar Leeds post punk band English Teacher, who won last year, might be the one thing holding back Fontaines’ winning chances, but certainly don’t write them off.
1. Sam Fender: People Watching
Call me biased – and indeed, anyone who has lived in Newcastle for any period of time is surely biased when it comes to the local god Sam Fender – but People Watching is the finest record on the list. Sure, it has plenty of tracks that overtly aim for mainstream appeal – Arm’s Length’s indelible hook, Rein Me In’s peppy rework with the other British popstar of the moment, Olivia Dean – but People Watching offers plenty of depth too, with Fender reckoning with his newfound stardom, and how success has uncomfortably pulled him away from his North Shields council house roots. He reflects on his rose-tinted memories of Tyneside in hypnotic Nostalgia’s Lie, summoning a melody and chord progression every bit as elegant as a timeless folk standard, and he claps back at the industry’s “fetishizing” at his working class background in the exquisitely dark TV Dinner. His songs are often on the patient side – the cinematic slow-burner Wild Long Lie unravels for six woozy minutes – but invariably they deliver an almighty pay-off. It all ends in the heart-wrenching ballad Remember My Name, which renders the Easington Colliery Brass Band muted and ghostly behind Fender’s towering vocal performance. It’s a perfect record – but then again, you won’t find anyone else in this part of the country who’ll say otherwise.
What’s the highlight? Nostalgia’s Lie is a perfect song for wallowing in like a warm bath, but my pick for People Watching’s ultimate highlight is Little Bit Closer, an awe-inspiring stadium rock number about finding God that still gives me goosebumps.
Will it win? As the most popular artist on the lineup, Fender seems likely to get snubbed by the judges – Pulp and Blur were both controversially denied the prize in 1994, whilst more recently Charli xcx should have been a shoo-in for BRAT last year – but perhaps the presence of other similarly big names on the list including Pulp themselves and 2018 winners Wolf Alice will help People Watching’s odds. The fact that this year’s prize is taking place in Newcastle – the first time it’s left London – would make a win for the city’s patron saint Fender fitting. Too perfect, surely?
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