The Say Award: Race for the Prize

When asked, one year on, to reflect upon the night that Thirteen Lost & Found was announced as Scottish Album of the Year by award hosts Vic Galloway and Janice Forsyth, RM Hubbert is understandably hazy on certain details. “My main recollection is that the Barras needs better air conditioning – it was roasting” Hubby replies. “I was drinking cider like water before the announcement so I was completely steaming. And I don’t remember a great deal after the announcement, to tell the truth – the combination of shock and a seemingly endless supply of alcohol took care of that. I do remember almost crushing Vic with an overenthusiastic hug. Janice looked terrified. Then I swore at the audience for 15 minutes.”

Casting his mind back a year further, to the evening Everything’s Getting Older scooped the inaugural SAY Award, Aidan Moffat is similarly sketchy on details. “I had tennis elbow and my drinking arm was in a sling all night” he recollects. “I remember nearly dropping my pint when [Bill Wells and I] were announced as the winners, then it's pretty much all a blur until about 8am the next day when I had stupidly agreed to do a radio interview. Then I slept for a day.”

On 19 June, SAY will return to a dolled up Barrowland Ballroom to crown a third winner. As in previous years, the ceremony marks the culmination of a process that began months earlier with ballots from 100 nominators; the 20 albums with the highest scores formed a long-list, and this has subsequently been whittled down to a shortlist of 10 via a combination of a public vote and the deliberations of a 12-person judging panel.

Biffy Clyro’s Opposites clinched the former, while Boards of Canada’s Tomorrow’s Harvest, CHVRCHES’ The Bones of What You Believe, Edwyn Collins’ Understated, Hector Bizerk’s Nobody Seen Nothing, Mogwai’s Les Revenants, RM Hubbert’s Breaks & Bone, Steve Mason’s Monkey Minds in the Devil’s Time, The Pastels’ Slow Summits and Young Fathers’ Tape Two complete the list.

"In each year of the SAY Award, I’ve discovered something new that I hadn’t heard before. That’s pretty fucking cool" – RM Hubbert

As Scottish Music Industry Association chair and SAY Award founder Stewart Henderson acknowledges, it can “on the face of it seem like quite a cumbersome amount of numbers – 100s, 20s, 10s, all that stuff”, but the staggered process is ultimately “elegantly simple in terms of what it does”; a means of not only arriving at a winner, but a way of celebrating each of the nominees along the way. “I think that, for me, the longlist is the strongest stage of the award,” Henderson suggests, speaking on the eve of the public vote. “I think that in those 20 albums you have a snapshot of the diversity and the strength of music coming out of Scotland, and you have that 4-week period where everyone gets to listen to the records [via the SAY website]. Some they may already know, some they may discover for the first time and like, some they may hear for the first time and hate – that’s alright. I just think that as broad a representation of Scottish music as you can get in that list, the better.”

Hubby also notes the longlist’s potential to direct people towards things that may otherwise have passed them by. “I’ve been deeply involved in the Scottish music industry for over 20 years and I like to think that I’m pretty clued into what’s happening with music in our country” he says, “but in each year of the SAY Award, I’ve discovered something new that I hadn’t heard before. That’s pretty fucking cool.” Scan what SAY jokingly call ‘the longer list’ – the 137 titles that received at least one vote during the initial nomination stage – and the likelihood of being introduced to something fresh and exciting approaches certainty.

With two instalments now successfully banked, Henderson is tentatively proud of SAY’s burgeoning status. “It’s not perfect, it never will be” he caveats, “but I think it’s a remarkable success story in terms of what it’s been able to do in its first 3 years. Obviously I wouldn’t want to sound too pleased with myself, but I’m quietly struck with just how familiar it all seems to feel now.” He qualifies this, however, with a suggestion that more could be done to ensure nominees capitalise on any exposure SAY might bring. While Hubby credits the win with ‘opening doors’ during promotion of Breaks & Bone (“The most difficult part of creating and distributing any kind of art isn’t getting people to like it, it’s getting people to listen/see/experience it in the first place, [and] having that ‘stamp of approval’ has made it much easier for me to do that”), Moffat is upfront about the current limitations of the Award’s reach, characterising it more as a promising work-in-progress. (“It'll take years for the SAY Award to become part of the public consciousness, but it's on the right path. And if any of the bands sell a few more records because of it, then it's worth doing.”)

“I look at it maybe with a kind of strange perspective,” Henderson posits, “because I have an old, kind of Chelsea pensioner’s recollection of the Mercury in 2000” – the year his former band The Delgados were nominated for The Great Eastern. “Of course, we were in an entirely different landscape as far as the music industry was concerned, in terms of retail and the kind of traditional, conventional channels that you would use to promote your albums... But still, when we got word of our Mercury nomination, it was like those red lights going up at the start of a Grand Prix. It was like ‘right, you’ve got fucking six weeks to get as much out of this as you possibly can’.”

He expresses his hope that, as SAY becomes increasingly established, its equivalent “media scrum” will intensify, and the benefits for all will multiply. “But I see that not so much as a failing but as a challenge; a fealty on our part” he states. “And more generally, I think that the structure, the skeleton of the award – I can’t see what’s wrong with it, I really can’t. I think that it’s a format that all of us – and I mean all of us: the music fans, the artists, everyone involved to a certain extent – can sit back and feel quite proud of. Because it’s not just about how the award has been pulled together; it’s the buy-in, the enthusiasm, the support and open-mindedness of the music fans out there.” He allows himself a contented sigh. “I think it’s great for that, it really is.”

As well as recognising and rewarding achievements in music, SAY also supports the visual arts through its accompanying art commission; open to graduates of Scotland’s four major art schools, it invites shortlisted artists to contribute towards an exhibition at Glasgow’s CCA, with the winner then appointed to make custom pieces to serve as trophies on the night of the ceremony. Last year, the commission was awarded jointly to Gregor Morrison and Emma Reid, both of whom speak fondly of their experiences. “We were given free rein to produce the artwork for both the group show and the awards pieces themselves, which was great from a creative standpoint,” says Morrison, an Edinburgh-based artist who produced large sculptural pieces for the CCA exhibition and silkscreen prints for the awards.

In terms of its logistical impact, he credits the prize with allowing him to set up a studio and workshop, as well as helping to purchase equipment and materials. “[And] the exposure has been great too” he continues. “It has definitely upped my profile and has led to some interesting projects in and around Scotland” – including an upcoming SAY showcase alongside music from RM Hubbert and Meursault’s Neil Pennycook. In Morrison's estimation, tightening and exploring the connections between the (complimentary yet often sequestered) worlds of music and visual arts is central to SAY’s potential. “Encouraging dialogue between these creative bodies is hugely beneficial to both, allowing the sharing of ideas and viewpoints” he argues. “This year perhaps more than any other it is important to show what really makes up Scotland's cultural landscape and what has affected our cultural output, and to recognise the artists in both fields that are shaping and interpreting that. This recognition and inclusion cannot be underrated.”

For Emma, a former student of Glasgow School of Art, the fire that recently devastated the school’s iconic Mackintosh building can’t help but complicate her reflections on SAY. “Like many people I found the news heart-breaking” she explains, “and so it feels quite uncomfortable to speak about the Art Commission – an experience that was really positive for me and which stemmed from my degree show in The Mac – at a time when so many current 4^th year students are very uncertain about what will happen next.” With the exhibition venue a stone’s throw from GSOA’s blackened walls, and with two of this year’s shortlisted artists students of the institution, a similar sense of shock and sadness is likely to infiltrate this year’s celebrations - indeed, the announcement has already had to be forced back a week as a direct result of the blaze. But when it comes to the impact of the prize on her personally, Reid is unequivocal about its merits. “It was a great experience, and it gave me important focus following graduation. It made it very easy for me to justify renting a studio… and it continues to fund my practice, so I’m very much aware of how lucky I am to have been involved.”

This year, the art commission judges chose ECA graduate Ian Jackson as their winner; by the time this article appears online, he’ll be in the midst of crafting a complement of artworks to be handed to the shortlisted acts on 19 June. We ask Vic Galloway, preparing to compere the ceremony for a third time, to sum up the atmosphere at the last two events. “[It’s] been light-hearted, friendly and fun” he replies “but a definite feeling of tension and expectation hangs in the air until the final announcement. Then there's a sense of relief and congratulation directly afterwards. I'm glad that people have taken the award in the right way in Scotland. Although anyone would gladly walk away with the kudos and the prize money, it doesn't feel hugely competitive or cut-throat. The very nature of these things means there has to be one winner, but everyone is magnanimous and cheerful about it.” Last year, he recalls, “it really was down to the wire. I only found out the winner seconds before the audience did. It was really exciting though, and Hubby seemed genuinely thrilled and dumbfounded.”

Hubby wasn’t the only one sent reeling by the announcement. In addition to the aforementioned SMIA and SAY connections, Henderson runs record label Chemikal Underground – home to both the Award’s winners thus far, and therefore a minor elephant in the room in year three. “I think the fact that Aidan and Bill won it in the first year, and then Hubby went and won last year…” he stops and laughs. “It was a pain in the baws for me more than anything else, because I don’t like people to have the excuse to read into something that isn’t actually there…” Of Hubby’s win, he stresses his amazement. “I can honestly tell you – and this is certainly no reflection on Hubby’s album, make no mistake – [but] no one was more surprised than me when that won. I forgot to clap. I remember everyone was standing clapping and cheering, and I think I actually put my hand to my forehead and went ‘oh for fuck’s sake!’ So I hope Hubby never saw me from the stage” he laughs, “his label boss just ruefully shaking his head when it’s announced he’s won...”

Though he deliberately keeps his distance from the judges’ chamber and doesn’t like to “dig around too deep after the decision’s been made,” Henderson confirms that, by all accounts, last year was “an absolute ding-dong. The judges were being screamed at, essentially, to come to a decision. I think they were still squabbling over a winner literally less than a minute before the envelope was handed over. It was a very, er, active and febrile debate – which is good! I think that’s how it should be…”

Stewart muses further on the award’s unpredictability. “Whenever you take a fairly disparate bunch of people and put them in a room to discuss what is, essentially, an almost impossible question – well, all bets are off. Anyone who says ‘oh such-and-such is going to win it, it’s a fucking stick-on’…” He sighs. “I’m just like ‘you know something? You don’t fucking get it. You’ve no thought about this enough, because nothing’s a stick-on’. If you hermetically seal 12 people in a room to talk about something as esoteric as how to evaluate and rank albums of different genres and styles – well, anyone who says they know what they’re going to come up with is kidding themselves frankly…” He labels this the “free radical component of the award”; the capricious element that places multi-platinum hits alongside low-key self-releases without privileging either, and which is liable once again to give bookies a sair heid come the 19^th. “It’s something that will infuriate some” Stewart concludes, “but I think it makes for a pretty interesting envelope opening once a year, you know what I mean?”