Meteor Choice nominees announced

Three previous winners are among the 10 acts nominated for Ireland’s premier music prize – the Meteor Choice award.

Adrian Crowley, Julie Feeney and Two Door Cinema Club all feature in the shortlist for the award which will be announced on Thursday, March 7th. The winner will receive a prize of €10,000.

Feeney, who previously won the inaugural award in 2006 for her debut album 13 songs, has been nominated for her new album Clocks.

It was the winner of best album  in The Irish Times Ticket Awards 2012 as voted by The Irish Times readers.

Singer-songwriter Adrian Crowley, who won the 2010 award for Season of the Sparks, has also been nominated for its follow-up I See Three Birds Flying.

Two Door Cinema Club, who had both critical and commercial success with their debut album Tourist History which won in 2011, are nominated for the follow up Beacon which went straight to the top of the Irish charts.

The Cast of Cheers get their second nomination for Family as do Delorentos for Little Sparks.

Wallis Bird gets her first nomination for her self-titled album which is her third release. She is a previous winner of the now defunct Meteor Ireland Music Award for best Irish female artist.

Damien Dempsey, a surprise omission from previous shortlists, is nominated for his sixth album Almighty Love.

Heathers, the band featuring twins Ellie and Louise McNamara, get a nomination for their album Kingdom.

Other debut nominees are Dublin-based songwriter Mumblin’ Deaf Ro for his third album Dictionary Crimes and for Limerick-based band Windings for I Am Not The Crow.

Chairman of the judging panel Tony Clayton-Lea described the standard of Irish albums in 2012 as "very high" and it was tough to whittle the list down to ten.

He added: "The list chosen by the judging panel reflects,in my opinion, a good balance between indie acts such as Cast of Cheers, Windings, Delorentos and Mumblin’ Deaf Ro and acts that have higher mainstream profiles such as Damien Dempsey, Julie Feeney, Two Door Cinema Club, Heathers, and Wallis Bird. Overall, then, it’s a really good list covering more musical bases and tastes than, perhaps, previous years have done.”

Among the significant omissions were Van Morrison for Born To Sing: No Plan B, Sinead O'Connor's How About I Be Me (And You be You), The Script's third album 3 and Kopek's acclaimed debut White Collar Lies.

[ Listen to (most of) the albums here. ]

Full list of nominations:

Wallis Bird – Wallis Bird (Rubyworks)

The Cast of Cheers – Family (Schoolboy Error)

Adrian Crowley - I See Three Birds Flying (Chemikal Underground)

Delorentos - Little Sparks (Delo Records)

Damien Dempsey – Almighty Love (Sony)

Julie Feeney – Clocks (Mittens)

Heathers – Kingdom (Warner Music)

Mumblin Deaf Ro – Dictionary Crimes (Popical Island)

Two Door Cinema Club – Beacon (Kitsune)

Windings - I Am Not The Crow (Out On A Limb)