Nick Cave shortlisted for 2024 Australian Music Awards

Albums by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Amyl and The Sniffers, Dirty Three and Hiatus Kaiyote are among the finalists for the 20th annual Australian Music Awards, announced on Thursday, November 14.

The 2024 shortlist includes nine albums selected from a pool of 600 and culled from a total of 46 nominated records released in the past year by Australian musicians.

This year's list sees veteran acts such as Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds make the list thanks to their 18th album wild God. In the award's two-decade history, Cave has been nominated four times, including in 2016 Skeleton Treeof 2019 Ghosteenand his 2021 partnership with Warren Ellis, Slaughter.

Punk outfit Amyl and The Sniffers make another appearance on the shortlist, with third album Cartoon darkness giving them their third nomination to date. Meanwhile, Melbourne neo-soul quartet Hiatus Kaiyote are nominated for Love Heart Cheat Codetheir second nomination after 2021 Mood Valiant.

Newcomers like Grace Cummings and Rowena Wise also make the list thanks to their own Ramona and Pointless Acts of Beauty records, respectively. The Australian First Nations community is recognized through the Walmatjarri Elder Kankawa Nagarra community Virlmarni and Dobby's Warrangu? River Story.

Two of the shortlisted albums from this year's shortlist are also up for the ARIA Awards later this month, including Dobby's record, which is up for Best World Music Album, and Audrey Powne's From the Firewhich is nominated for Best Jazz Album.

Spearheaded by award founder and director Scott Murphy, past AMP recipients include Sampa the Great (twice), the Avalanches, Courtney Barnett, the late Gurrumul, King Stingray and most recently champions RVG.

“On behalf of The AMP, SoundMerch, our industry partners – and the Australian music industry as a whole, I sincerely thank our judges for donating their time, expertise – and passion!” said Murphy. “It's not easy to review over 600 albums and choose to highlight only 9.”

The winning album will be announced at an event held at APRA AMCOS on Wednesday 4 December. The winning artist will receive A$50,000 ($32,000) in prize money, courtesy of headline sponsor SoundMerch.

“Thanks to everyone for their support. It means a lot to us to be recognized by AMP,” Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds said in a statement.

“We are grateful to have been shortlisted for this award,” said Sniffers' Amyl and Dec Mehrtens. “Australian music is dear to our hearts and we're incredibly proud to be able to create and perform the music we do.”

AMP 2024 Shortlist:

Audrey Powne – From the Fire
Amyl and The Sniffers – Cartoon darkness
Dobby – Warrangu? River Story
Grace Cummings – Ramona
Hiatus Kaiyote – Love Heart Cheat Code
Kankawa Nagara – Virlmarni
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – wild God
Rowena Wise – Pointless Acts of Beauty
Dirty Three – Love changes everything