Mercury Prize 2013: List of nominees in full

The Mercury Music Prize 2013 nominees

David Bowie’s first new album for a decade is leading the field for this year’s Barclaycard Mercury Prize, which has returned to the mainstream after 2012’s shortlist was dubbed the “most obscure” in recent history.

The 12-strong shortlist for the album of the year in 2013 includes Bowie’s The Next Day, which the bookies installed as favourite alongside the new Arctic Monkeys album AM.

The Mercury Prize 2013 nominees, as reviewed by The Independent's critics:

- Arctic Monkeys, AM

****

“A sassy self-overhaul, AM issues lubricious R&B come-ons over a self-assured narrative arc with personality and open potential cannily spliced.”

- David Bowie, The Next Day

*****

“Rarely has a comeback been effected with such panache as David Bowie displays on The Next Day.”

- Disclosure, Settle

*

“Track after track of drab, methodical beats plodding along laboriously behind finicky little hihat moves and quacking synth lines.”

- Foals, Holy Fire

***

“on Holy Fire, Foals move further away from their nerdy math-rock origins to a more muscular rock'n'roll style.”

- Jake Bugg, Jake Bugg

****

“A youthful troubadour following in Ed Sheeran's footsteps, Jake Bugg brings a scrappily engaging rockabilly intensity to catchy folk rants.”

- James Blake, Overgrown

****

“He sculpts his skeletal pulses and ghostly palimpsests of piano chords into more persuasive structures that allow his airy, melismatic falsetto to soar freely.”

- Jon Hopkins, Immunity

Not reviewed

- Laura Marling, Once I Was an Eagle

*****

“Even in a career already marked by unusual precocity, Once I Was an Eagle is an extraordinary achievement.”

- Laura Mvula, Sing to the Moon

*****

“We've got a special one here... May be the soundtrack of the summer.”

- Rudimental, Home

****

“Just when you think it's done, it finds another gear through the kind of sly, brilliant touch that suggests Rudimental are worthy heirs to the likes of Soul II Soul and Basement Jaxx.”

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- Savages, Silence Yourself

****

“Post-millennial indie boy-rock has taken a savage beating here. And it may prove the best it’s ever had.”

- Villagers, Awayland

*****

“With results both as pleasurable, as inventive and as absorbing as these, there seems no danger that the impact of {Awayland} will be merely momentary."