So, another year's nominees for the Mercury Prize have been unveiled. The prize's rationale seems as mysterious as ever: to compare Coldplay with Polar Bear seems as ludicrous a mushroom-or-mango exercise as pitting Robert Wyatt against Jamelia, or John Tavener against the Jesus and Mary Chain - all names that have appeared in previous shortlists.
Expert advice is clearly required to assess this list, and who better than the Guardian's very own pop maven Alexis Petridis? What does he make of it?
"It's a bit narrow," he says. "Normally I think the judges have done the best they can, but this year there really are too many boring guitar bands and they've made it look like a worse year for music than it has been, which is quite a feat.
"They do seem to have overlooked quite a few very good albums: the Roots Manuva album is a very good record by a very good British rapper; I'm quite surprised they didn't nominate Tom Vek ... and it's only snobbery that kept them from nominating the Girls Aloud LP, which was very well produced by Xenomania, and was quite critically acclaimed. But it's been overlooked because they're a manufactured pop band. Alright, it's not a consistently brilliant record, but then neither is the Maximo Park record.
"It wouldn't have killed them to nominate the Chemical Brothers album. Why not British Sea Power?
"And I'm not a great fan of Jem, but if you're going to have a middle-of-the-road girl singer, she's much more interesting than KT Tunstall."
Pressed for potential winners, Petridis picks three contenders: M.I.A, whose multicultural stew of influences is "genuinely innovative" (although he reckons its offhand references to terrorism may rule it out after July 7). Flavour-of-the-season the Magic Numbers are also in with a shout, he reckons, even if their country-tinged jangle pop doesn't succeed as perfectly on record as it does live.
"And if you want to gamble on a genuine outsider, the Go! Team album is terrific. It's neither dance, nor indie, but it's very good stuff, and I know them! Seriously, though, Mercury winners tend to tick a lot of boxes, and they do: it's adventurous, it has elements of dance and guitar pop."
