Foals Alarm
It’s the Mercury Music Prize 2010 tonight, a market that has been under the media spotlight following a gamble on Paul Weller.
Having been matched as low as 1.52 he has drifted back out to 4.2 on Betfair at time of writing. We would have said lay Weller because following the publicity you would have thought the Mercury would like to maintain a reputation for being decided on the night.
The favourite has been turned over in the last three years which actually points to a music award that is clean from insider knowledge.
Given last year’s winner Speech Debelle has gone down like a lead balloon – achieving very poor album sales – they may want to pick a safer winner tonight that is sure to shift lots of units. So favourites The xx would fit this mould. At the same time, the Mercury has a history for picking artists that haven’t entered the commercial consciousness, and there is no way we will advise an Evens favourite purely from a value perspective.
Laura Marling has been nominated before and didn’t win but that didn’t stop Elbow winning second time around. Mumford & Sons offer absolutely nothing by way of a new sound, and while Wild Beasts is a decent album we much prefer the claims of Foals. They have gone down a storm at this summer’s festivals and have been bigged up by various music luminaries.
We were about to say, get stuck into the 25-1 freely available but it seems others are interested in backing Foals today too, as they are now a best-priced 16-1 with Paddy Power. Snap up that price pronto.
Rob Furber