Mercury rises for art pop of Franz Ferdinand (original) (raw)

Scottish art pop triumphed over female soul as Franz Ferdinand won the Mercury music prize last night for their debut album.

The Glaswegian four-piece, who guest-edited G2 earlier this year, were the clear favourites ahead of their Scottish-based contemporaries Belle and Sebastian and Snow Patrol, plus a trio of young female artists, Jamelia, Joss Stone and Amy Winehouse.

For the first time for several years, the prize was carried off by a band who combined leftfield sensibilities, critical acclaim and commercial success - with their album, also called Franz Ferdinand.

Taking their name from the archduke whose assassination triggered the first world war, the unrepentantly intellectual group have been credited with bringing wit and a uniquely British style back to the US as well as UK charts.

They have also apparently achieved the near impossible by making infectiously danceable indie music. Led by Alex Kapranos, the band played its single, Take Me Out, at the lavish ceremony held at the Grosvenor House Hotel in west London.

Accepting the prize, Kapranos said: "We really didn't expect to win this. We are truly gobsmacked. It's fantastic. We feel very chuffed, very honoured, particularly this year when we're surrounded by such fantastic bands.

"The bands this year do reflect a trend in the UK towards fantastic music."

It meant that Birmingham-raised Mike Skinner, aka The Streets, missed out after being nominated for the second time for his second album, A Grand Don't Come for Free.

Skinner's equally distinctive debut, Original Pirate Material, lost out to Ms Dynamite in 2002.

While the £20,000 prize is hardly lucrative in music industry terms, artists usually enjoy a Mercury-inspired rise in sales once they have been shortlisted or won the prize. The Zutons were a little-known band from Liverpool until they were nominated in July. Sales of their debut album subsequently rose from 30,000 to 100,000.

But last year, while sales of Dizzee Rascal's debut album Boy in Da Corner rose by 150% the day after his Mercury success, the edgy teenage rapper experienced only a small total rise in sales. Recent winners, including PJ Harvey's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea in 2001, and OK by Talvin Singh in 1999, have also experienced modest sales.

Since the award's inception in 1992, the judges have faced criticism from all corners; with condemnation some years for their commercial choices and at other times for their apparently token inclusion of classical music albums and obscure folk singers.

Initially criticised for apparently favouring indie-rock artists such as Suede, the judges tried to cast off claims they were middle-aged rock fans by giving the prize to the mainstream dance act M People in 1994.

While the 12 shortlisted artists have traditionally included one classical record, there were no such choices this year from some 1,800 LPs by British artists released in the past 12 months.

Simon Frith, the long-established chair of the judges, said the eclecticism of the 2004 list was not tokenism but reflected the diversity of modern British music in which a white 17-year-old from Devon, Stone, could turn out a 70s-style soul record.

The prize was created to give exposure to underground talent, but this year, despite the appearance of alternative artists, major commercial record labels have been the big winners.

Nominally alt-rock, Keane and Snow Patrol's glossy albums are put out by Universal, which has also heavily backed its jazz-influenced singer-songwriter Winehouse, 20, whose debut album has been endorsed by Parkinson and widely played on Radio 2.

Stone has also been hoisted into the charts by a major label promotional campaign and a slickly produced album, while Jamelia, 23, the chart R&B singer from Birmingham, is signed to EMI.

But Mercury's class of 2004 included several trademark oddities, such as the blues-rock of The Zutons, who alarmed the bookmakers when a flurry of late bets were placed on them winning.

The biggest cheers were reserved for Robert Wyatt, 59, who has played with everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Paul Weller, and has used a wheelchair for 30 years after falling from a window at a party.

Wyatt, a former member of the 60s band Soft Machine, was the rank outsider, but was introduced by the legendary producer Brian Eno in glowing terms. "I switched on the radio once, it was a John Peel show," said Eno, "and I heard a voice like no other voice I had heard before singing a song like nothing else I had heard before. I subsequently became a believer in Robert Wyatt."

Before the ceremony, Wyatt said it would be a "disgrace" if he won.