As a writer on culture, I’ve always felt about the Mercury Prize rather as one might about a colleague’s birthday. I know I ought to care more about it than I do. The problem for me is that firstly, though obviously I like it (I’m not a psychopath), I don’t have a particularly sophisticated appreciation of music (which is why I struggle a bit with opera, unable as I am to see past the preposterous narratives) and secondly, I’m not very cool. I have really quite mainstream taste, which is very much not the Mercury Prize’s reputation.
Which is why I’m delighted by yesterday’s announcement of the 12-strong shortlist of nominees, nearly all of whom I’ve heard of and nearly all of whose work I genuinely enjoy. I hold up my hands to not having listened to Gwenno’s majority-Cornish language album Tresor - which I think means ‘treasure’ - or anything by this year’s sole jazz entrant Fergus McCreadie, though I will have dutifully made the attempt by the time the winner is announced on September 8.
With Little Simz (the only one of this year’s nominees to have had a slot on the list before, in 2019 when her Grey Area lost out to fellow Londoner Dave’s Psychodrama), Wet Leg (who played their first ever gig just over a year ago), Self-Esteem, Sam Fender and of course blouse-sporting global megastar Harry Styles (wot, no math rock?) among the noms this feels to me like the most accessible Mercury Prize list in years.
Usually my attempts to get my head around whatever the bookies are pushing (black midi springs to mind, or Back Country, New Road, neither of which I’ve managed to get on with at all, I’m sorry to say) end in me feeling like a teenager trying to impress a self-important boy on the bus when all I really want to listen to is The Shamen and En Vogue. This time I can’t wait to while away my tedious journey from Lewisham to the Standard’s office in Kensington refreshing my memory with all these brilliant albums.
Either my taste or my general pop awareness has finally caught up with the music industry - the prize is voted for by a panel of independent music professionals from performers to promoters, and journalists to festival organisers - or the Mercury has ‘gone mainstream’. No doubt somebody thinks that, probably that self-important boy from the 158 to Bramhall, but I don’t care. I’m thrilled.
It’s also a great year for women - this year’s list nearly matches the 2020 high point when female artists outnumbered male artists for the first time, with four solo women (Simz, Self-Esteem, Gwenno and south Londoner Joy Crookes) alongside the fab noisy rock duos Wet Leg and Nova Twins, as well as Jessie Buckley (with her musical partner Bernard Butler) among the nominees.
It’s less good for racial diversity, which is down on recent years - though Nova Twins are the first black rock outfit to receive a nomination, they, Simz, Crookes and Kojey Radical are the only artists of colour on the list. Still, I suppose if you add up Yard Act, Butler and Fender, there’s only one more white lad with a guitar, whatever that indicates. One way or another, I feel like I’ve finally got something at stake this year.
Speaking of stakes...
Having spent the evenings of a recent holiday in the US becoming obsessed for the first time with my hosts’ favourite show, True Blood (I’m afraid I’m team Eric, inevitably), I was tickled to see that a late 19th century vampire hunting kit recently smashed its estimate at auction in Derby, going for £16,900 instead of the conservative £2,000 expected, to a buyer from the UK in what the auction house described as an “international bidding war”.
It was originally owned by Lord Hailey, an administrator in British-ruled India, but as any True Blood fan will know, most of it would have been entirely superflous. The brass crucifixes are about as much use as a chocolate teapot against your average vampire, ditto the pistols unless they’re shooting silver bullets, though the impressively hefty stake and mallet strike me as an effective, if inelegant, option. What I want to know is what these fervent international bidders know that we don’t?
