Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Take Home Ivor Novello Album Award

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Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have beaten English indie rockers Arctic Monkeys to take home the Album Award at the 59th Ivor Novello Awards, which took place on Thursday, 22nd May at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. The group’s 2013 album Push The Sky Away beat out Arctic Monkeys’ 2013 effort AM to claim the prize.

At the ceremony, the Album Award was presented to Cave and his bandmate Warren Ellis by Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders. According to NME, after accepting the award Cave said, “This is the one to get.”

“We don’t really go to many of these awards evenings but we come to this one,” he admitted, before thanking Ellis for his help with co-writing the album. “He taught me how to dispense with three chords and get it down to one,” Cave explained.

Other winners on the night included James Blake, who took home the award for Best Contemporary Song with his 2013 hit Retrograde, beating out Disclosure‘s Latch and Everything Everything‘s Kemosabe. “Until my second album I didn’t think I was a songwriter, but now that I’ve got this maybe I do,” Blake said.

Mumford & Sons won the award for International Achievement, which was accepted by frontman Marcus Mumford, who joked that award “felt a bit like a fucking obituary”. He thanked the crowd and revealed that the band are currently “hibernating”.

Electronic music titans The Chemical Brothers were awarded with the Outstanding Song Collection prize. Jerry Dammers, founding member of The Specials, won The Ivors Inspiration Award, which was presented to him by The Clash‘s Mick Jones, who deemed him “the tsar of ska”. Dammers then asked the audience to give Sun-Ra a round of applause on what would have been his 100th birthday.

Fleetwood Mac‘s newly rejoined member Christine McVie was given the Lifetime Achievement award. Other winners included Tom Odell, who was named Songwriter Of The Year, London Grammar who won Best Song Musically And Lyrically for their track Strong, and Daft Punk collaborator Nile Rodgers who won The PRS For Music Special International Award.

Rodgers wept as he received his award. “I love music so much – I get the same feeling when I walk into a studio with David Bowie or Madonna or a basement studio with Disclosure,” he told the audience.

He also stood up for the ideals of disco, saying, “All that disco sucks stuff was garbage. We had more in common with the punk bands than you could ever imagine.” Check out the full list of winners below.

Watch: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Jubilee Street (Official Uncensored Music Video)