Pulp, CMAT and Wolf Alice nominated for Mercury Prize

British band Wolf Alice have broken a Mercury Prize record by becoming the only act in the award's 34-year history to be nominated for all of their first four albums.

The quartet, who won in 2018 for second album Visions of a Life, have claimed their fourth nomination for The Clearing, an album rooted in the sounds of 1970s soft rock.

Other nominees for the 2025 music prize include Pulp - also former winners - who are recognised for More, their first album in 24 years.

At the age of 84, folk musician Martin Carthy becomes the oldest ever Mercury nominee - while viral pop star PinkPantheress's adrenalin-inducing 20-minute mixtape Fancy That is thought to be the shortest ever nominated album.

The award, which recognises the best British or Irish album of the past 12 months, will be presented at a ceremony on 16 October.

For the first time, the event will be held in Newcastle - as organisers address accusations that the prize had become too London-centric.

Last year's winners, Leeds-based rock band English Teacher, were the first act from outside the capital to lift the trophy in 10 years.

By contrast, this year's shortlist includes just one London act - Wolf Alice.

Sam Fender will be a home town favourite at this year's ceremony after being nominated for the potent rock of his third album, People Watching.

Jazz musician Joe Webb comes from Wales, and incorporates his country's musical heritage (along with a love of Britpop) into his nominated album, Hamstrings and Hurricanes.

Scotland's Jacob Alon, meanwhile, is recognised for the heartbreaking gossamer ballads of their debut album, In Limerence.

"I didn't think I was going to make another record so quickly," said CMAT of the follow-up to her Mercury nominated second album, Crazymad, For Me.

"[But] when all these ideas started landing, I knew I needed to do this before I could do anything else."

Any fears that Euro-Country would be a cynical cash-grab sequel were quickly allayed. Every song packs a punch, whether she's singing about the Irish financial crisis of 2008 or her irrational hatred of Jamie Oliver ("OK! Don't be a bitch! The man's got kids and they wouldn't like this!" she sings.)

Smart, subversive and funny, the album contains some painfully sharp observations on relationships and impossible beauty standards that had her "trying to wax my legs with tape" at the age of nine.

Anyone who saw CMAT's vivid festival performances this summer has already been won over. Euro-Country seals the deal.

"Making this record saved my life," Emma-Jean Thackray told 10 Magazine of her second album, Weirdo.

Written after her partner of 12 years unexpectedly died, the sprawling, soul-searching record finds Thackray re-examining every facet of her life as she tried to rebuild it.

"I needed to find a way back to myself after being so lost and everything I am is music – nothing else matters," she explained. "It's a survival record – full of pain but also silliness."

Recorded alone in her south London flat, the album is surprisingly light on its feet. The jazz-funk grooves are trippily curvaceous, the harmonies transcendent.

Borne of grief, it becomes a celebration of survival.

Inspired by underground raves, FKA Twigs' third album is all about losing yourself in music – those moments of raw humanity, where you stop thinking and simply feel.

Eusexua, she has said, is a word that describes "the tingling clarity" you get when you're struck by a new idea, when you kiss a stranger, or even "the moment before an orgasm".

The album attempts to recreate that feeling with a series of abstract, futuristic soundscapes and deconstructed club tracks.

They hypnotise and thrill, especially on Girl Feels Good, a whirling techno anthem that recalls Madonna's Ray Of Light; and the appropriately titled Drums Of Death, which chops up 13-year-old K-Pop samples into a pneumatic celebration of sex.

In mixing the cerebral with the sensual, Eusexua mostly succeeds – but occasionally the precision of Twigs' vision suffocates the spontaneity she was aiming for.

The fourth album by Dublin's Fontaines DC sees the quintet take their scratchy, sinister sound and run it through a Technicolor filter.

Where their previous albums were firmly rooted in Ireland, Romance was inspired by the neon lights of Tokyo and classic Japanese animation Akira, whose themes of nuclear era paranoia inform the band's nervy guitar anthems.

Lead single Starburster is a second-by-second account of a panic attack singer Grian Chatten experienced at London's St Pancras Station. In The Modern World tackles the disillusionment of getting to Hollywood and discovering its seedy underbelly.

Recorded after a US tour with the Arctic Monkeys, Romance saw Fontaines reach for a bigger audience without compromising their principles. "I didn't want to write, like, a Champagne Supernova, but I did want to do something that felt like it was deep within and far without," Chatten told the Guardian.

The gamble paid off, with songs like Favourite and Bug ringing out around stadiums this summer – marking out Fontaines as the biggest guitar band of the 2020s.

A jazz album inspired by Britpop? Why the heck not.

Hamstrings and Hurricanes marks the full-length debut of Welsh pianist Joe Webb, whose playful, improvisational style has already won the praise of Jamie Cullum and Jools Holland.

He delivers a swinging, bluesy take on traditional jazz, playing off his long-serving sidemen (double bassist Will Sach and drummer Sam Jesson) in a series of semi-improvised song sketches, recorded live last year.

The final track, Hiraeth, is a riff on Oasis's Shakermaker – although you'd be hard-pressed to spot the similarities without a degree in musicology.

The album's title, meanwhile, is a tribute to Lionel Messi. Webb is a huge fan and used to fly to Barcelona to watch "La Pulga" in action every week.

Now that Messi's getting older, and has moved to Miami, Webb reckons the two biggest risks the footballer faces are pulling his hamstrings and surviving hurricane season.

The father of the 1960s British folk scene, Martin Carthy was a direct influence on everyone from Bob Dylan and Paul Simon to Billy Bragg and Blur's Graham Coxon.

Released on his 84th birthday, Transform Me Then Into A Fish is a recreation of his 1965 debut album, the songs reappraised through a lens of age and experience.

Carthy's voice is careworn but it's never less than compelling. Over the years, the musician's delivery has become more conversational – lending a fresh pathos to Lovely Joan, the story of a maid who tricks a naïve suitor into handing over his jewellery, then steals his horse.

He goes one further on The Famous Flower of Serving Men, delivering all 32 verses of the 17th Century revenge ballad in spoken word, laying stark the brutal violence at its core.

Carthy is the third member of his family to receive a Mercury nomination, after daughter Eliza and his late wife, Norma Waterson. Eliza joins him on Ye Mariners All, and adds a sitar line to a mystical version of Scarborough Fair.

When he first excavated and recorded these songs six decades ago, they were forgotten relics. Now, they are part of the folk cannon – but, as he closes the circle of his long career, Carthy shows how adaptable they (and he) remain.

Pa Salieu was tipped as the UK's next rap star thanks to crossover hits like Frontline and his Send Them Back To Coventry mixtape. But in 2022, his rise came to an abrupt halt by a 33-month prison sentence for his participation in a 2018 nightclub brawl.

Afrikan Alien is his first mixtape since being released, and it showcased a newly philosophical angle to his lyrics – reflecting on his incarceration, his Gambian family, and what it means to be of African heritage in the UK.

On the title track, he gets angry at a "hostile" environment where "melanin [is] kryptonite". But he also shares his hard-won wisdom: "Eradicate any kind of energy that pins you down... Accumulate all that you need and help the people eat."

Reflecting his heritage, the music is full of Afrobeat rhythms, log drums, spiritual mantras and lilting guitar lines.

Best of all is Allergy – whose flitting percussion adds a casual swagger to Salieu's story of becoming "allergic to the bad vibes" after turning to scripture.

Whizzing past in just 27 minutes, it's nonetheless a signpost that Pa Salieu is back on track.

In a Reddit Q&A, PinkPantheress said Fancy That represents a "more fun" side to her personality than the introspective, "emo asf" lyrics of her debut album Heaven Knows.

She certainly seems to be having a blast on party-centric club cuts like Romeo and Tonight, while Illegal can stake a claim to being song of the summer after its opening lyrics – "My name is Pink and it's really nice to meet you" – inspired more than 39 million TikToks.

Musically, it's a breathless, colourful sprint through a night out, full of conversational asides and budding romance.

For the soundtrack, the 24-year-old looks back to the music of her youth for the soundtrack, liberally sampling hits by Underworld, Basement Jaxx and Just Jack – without surrendering her own bubbly brew of capsule pop.

It's all over in about 20 minutes – but what a rush.

Sam Fender's an unusual proposition. He's a festival headliner with punch-the-sky choruses whose lyrics are overtly political.

On this, his third album, he picks at the scabs of northern working-class life, and rails against a system that leaves families mired in bureaucratic neglect.

Death and loss loom large. The title track was inspired by visiting his mentor and "surrogate mother" Annie Orwin in a palliative care home - and he paints a bleak picture of a "faciilty fallin' to bits / understaffed and overruled by callous hands".

The wistful Crumbling Empire draws parallels between the post-industrial decline of Detroit and Fender's hometown of North Shields, while Rein Me In finds him struggling to shake the ghosts of a failed relationship.

Fender said his ambition for People Watching was to write "11 songs about ordinary people", but this vexed, anxious album ends up being something more substantial - a tribute to human spirit in a time of deprivation and indifference.

Wolf Alice's fourth album has been their most polarising to date.

Working with US producer Greg Kurstin and adopting a polished soft rock sheen, the band have received 10/10 reviews from the NME and DIY Magazine ("their boldest, most striking record yet") but scathing critiques from rock publications like Uncut and The Quietus, which dismissed it as "less edgy than Sheryl Crow".

It was definitely a head-spinner for fans expecting the band to stick to their blend of 90s indie, shoegaze and dream pop.

Take lead single Bloom Baby Bloom. It's an anarchic song, full of two-bar guitar solos and ostentatious drum fills. Disorientating on first listen, the aural chaos serves a purpose, as singer Ellie Rowsell confronts misogyny and self-doubt in the verses before rising above the noise for a bucolic chorus.

Other songs are more straightforward – Just Two Girls is a warm and nostalgic reflection on friendship, and Passenger Seat is all pillowy melancholy as Rowsell recalls a road trip with an ex.

Like that song, The Clearing's cirriform melodies are best experienced on a coastal drive with the windows down and the wind blowing through your hair.

Ultimately, the band's fourth consecutive Mercury nomination is well deserved.