OEA Award Noms have been announced

The Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards nominees have been announced for the music categories.

It seems like they're getting the categories done right, which is nice. Rock bands in the rock categories, blues bands in the blues categories, etc. I know a complaint in the past has been that bands that don't fit certain categories were getting nominated (and winning) in them.

You can find all the noms over at the OEAA site (scroll down a bit, you'll find them).

The ones that I'm most interested are the categories for album of the year, artist of the year and new artist of the year.

Album Of The Year
Black Squirrels, Paying For Your Pleasure
Brad Hoshaw & The Seven Deadlies, self titled
Cursive, Mamma I’m Swollen
Matt Cox, My Last Dollar
Matt Whipkey, Instant Heart

Artist Of The Year
The Black Squirrels
Brad Hoshaw & The Seven Deadlies
Cursive
It’s True
Little Brazil

Best New Artist
El Genius
It’s True
Jes Winter Band
Little Black Stereo
Mitch Gettman

Each category has five good choices, so it will be hard for folks to pick. I believe I'm supposed to be part of "the academy" this year, so I actually get to vote (woohoo).

I liked all of the albums in album of the year and went to most of their respective CD release shows. I would place Little Brazil's "Son" in that category because it's damn good. One of my favorite albums this year, in fact.

Artist of the year is an interesting category. You have a lot of bands that did a lot of good things, although they did them in different ways. Honestly, it's kind of weird to compare Cursive and Brad Hoshaw, but that's the Omaha music scene for you.

As for best new artist, I think that's going to come down to It's True and Jes Winter Band. Both have been very buzzed about (albeit for completely different reasons) all year long.

We shall see.