Mercury prize 2012 - live blog Hello and welcome to the Mercury prize 2012! Regular readers - fans, if you must - of what are routinely described as "Tim Jonze's era-defining Mercury live blogs" (copyright: absolutely nobody, ever) may recall a sentence from last year's masterpiece. Laced with pathos and poignant beyond mere words, I turned to you dear reader and said: "Oh Lord, please don't let me be live blogging this thing again next year." And yet the Lord was clearly one of the few people not reading, so here I am once more, gearing up for my fourth Mercury Music Awards live blog. I guess when you're in demand, you're in demand. Especially when no other fool will volunteer for it. I can't lie, readers, this year's Mercury nominees list is not a vintage one. There are no obvious landmark records a la the xx's debut, or PJ Harvey's masterpiece Let England Shake. Instead we have a lot of wispy washy indie music - hot favourites Alt-J, The Maccabees - and a generous serving of retro folk, soul and psychedelia (Ben Howard, Michael Kiwanuka, Lianne La Havas, Richard Hawley). Only Plan B and Jessie Ware stand out as having made music that sounds like it could possibly have been recorded after the Watergate scandal, so let's hope they get rewarded for this. After all, the Mercury Prize is all about invention, no? We're at the Roundhouse this year, and will be watching it while hunched over a laptop from a slightly different balcony (we're all about variety). We're led to believe that it all kicks off around 7pm. Do let me know your tips, favourites and who the judges have mercilessly overlooked. You can email me on tim.jonze@guardian.co.uk or tweet me @timjonze. And I'll probably ignore you all because I'm too busy trying to locate a WiFi signal somewhere on a wobbly stool at the back of the venue. Anyway, the nominees are as follows (in completely random cut'n'paste order, because we are that impartial)... LIanne La Havas - Is Your Love Big Enough Ben Howard - Every Kingdom Michael Kiwanuka - Home Again The Maccabees - Given To The Wild Richard Hawley - Standing At The Sky's Edge Roller Trio - Roller Trio Django Django - Django Django Plan B - Ill Manors Jessie Ware - Devotion Alt-J - An Awesome Wave Field Music - Plumb Sam Lee - Ground Of It's Own And here's a fun video - dripping with infectious enthusiasm, I'm sure you'll agree - of me, Rebecca Nicholson and Alexis Petridis discussing the nominees. Just to get you in the Mercury mood, like ...