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Mercury music prize winners elbow out the competition
John Aizlewood10.09.08
Elbow have won the Mercury Music Prize for their album The Seldom Seen Kid.
Accepting the award at the Grosvenor House hotel ceremony last night, the band's lead singer Guy Garvey said: "I look at it the way Bedouin tribes look at a bowl of milk - it doesn't happen often but it's all the sweeter for it."
When asked what they would do with the £20,000 prize money, he said: "Spend it."
Loved and respected, if far from household names, Elbow are Mercury winners in the tradition of their friend Badly Drawn Boy (2000), PJ Harvey (2001) and Antony & The Johnsons (2005): an act who have progressed slowly but surely; who have maintained a consistently low profile and who have been concerned only with their music.
And so, the victory of The Seldom Seen Kid is a victory for the sometime Mercury values of masterly songwriting, languid romanticism and lush arrangements.
Indeed, when Garvey declared "this is the best thing that's ever happened to us", he wasn't joking.
On their fourth and already most successful album, they have built upon the validation that so delighted the everamenable Garvey when I spoke to him in May: "We're not prepared to compromise and that makes things difficult for us sometimes, but one of the best things about this job is having the respect of our peers." Now, the Bury quintet have the ultimate sign of peer respect.
And when he dedicated the victory to Elbow's friend Bryan Glancy, the Mancunian singer-songwriter who died aged just 39 in 2006, Garvey displayed genuine humility at his greatest moment.
Elbow weren't the only winners. The unknowns, Portico Quartet, Neon Neon and Rachael Unthank were simply pleased to be there; British Sea Power, Estelle likewise despite higher profiles, but where there are winners, there are losers.
The darkest horse, Laura Marling would have been a braver choice than Elbow, but tough times for Britain's music industry don't call for kooky Mercury winners.
Meanwhile pre-ceremony favourite Burial would have been the trendy option, but was surely punished for not turning up last night - always the most unforgivable sin in the eyes of awards ceremonies - as surely as Last Shadow Puppet Alex Turner was excluded for winning in 2006 with Arctic Monkeys.
Burial's fellow non-attendees Radiohead were bridesmaids for the fourth time; Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will always be half-American, while Adele merely served to remind us that Duffy had been forgotten. Now she would have given Elbow a run for their prize money.
