Quotes and gossip from last night’s Mercury Prize

Mercury Prize

Snippets! Gossips! Rumours? Things. We have them all, or rather we did, last night, from the red carpet and beyond.

Rab Allan of Glasvegas is a very nice chap, and he told us about their plans for next year: “The new album is basically finished, we’ve just got to record it.” This was all as singer (and cousin) James Allan disappeared – Rab told us he was ill but we heard from elsewhere that he’d “gone missing”. Odd. He continued: “We’ve been writing since the Christmas album. It’s being recorded with Rich Costey again, and James has actually just finished some demos. The new album’s a little bit more upbeat – it looks more towards the future, redemption as opposed to looking back.” Good stuff, should be nice.

Sweet Billy Pilgrim recognised us, that was also nice. We saw them at the Union Chapel a little while back so were extra-pleased when they received a nomination – in spite of henchman Tim Elsenburg still holding down his day-job as a service maintenance type man who famously found out about the nomination while fitting a toilet: “We’re going from immortal fear to massive excitement. The nerves have settled after the media run – it’s all so new and exciting to us. I think we’ve plateau’d! Our palms are less sweaty than they were at the beginning.” Bless them. “We got mistaken for our own road crew – we don’t have any. We’re the only band that don’t! The crew here found it hilarious – they said “where are your crew?”, and I said “gather round, lads”.

The Horrors‘ Spider Webb and Joshua Third also spoke to us about their performance at Offset on the weekend and the new track they’d just finished recording with Damon Albarn: “At Offset, everything that could’ve gone wrong did go wrong.” Yeah there were technical problems (45 minutes’ worth!) but we didn’t spot them – they played a great set, and were pleased when we told them this. “That’s good,” they said. Back to the new song… “We finished a new track yesterday which is going to be released soon, called ‘Whole New Way’. It doesn’t sound like anything on the last record, it just sounds like us. I don’t see the point of putting out more and more singles.”

Dave Okumu from The Invisible is a very lovely chap, who chatted to us for about 20 minutes on the balcony before we got the dictaphone out. When we did, we parodied the media run: “How do you feel about being nominated?”. Honestly, this is what happens on the media run. It’s astounding how bands’ ears prick up when you tell them you’ve seen them live, truly astonishing. Alas, The Invisible are doing great stuff: “We were asked to be in Covent Garden at about midday when the nominations were announced but we didn’t know whether we’d been nominated. We were just waiting nervously to hear the results, and then we just started getting an influx of texts from our friends saying “well done”. If I could’ve cartwheeled I would’ve done.”

Other gossip – a certain nichely famous TV presenter was eyeballing us all night, and even came across as a bit of a sleaze(o). Get that? 3AM girls, eat yo’ soulless hearts out. What does that even mean?

Strange news – just after Speech Debelle had been announced as the winner, Noel Fielding came stumbling past us with members of Kasabian either side, and kissed our Live Editor Catherine Wilson on the leg.

More coverage from Muso’s Towers will follow shortly such as a chat with Lauren Laverne where she talks about Kenickie, the judging panel and much more.