Sonic youth
In 1996, when I was 11, I stayed up late to watch the Mercury Music Prize ceremony. Pulp, Oasis, and Manic Street Preachers were nominated, alongside the War Child Help compilation, which featured both Oasis and Manic Street Preachers and was obligatory to every CD Back then scruffy, stand-offish guitar music was king, but the Mercurys always reserved one nomination for what the music press would term the ‘token jazz album’.’ I remember Pulp’s
