Bits #69: GUEST EDIT
Annie Mac on her fave new album, the comedian that kills her, her top interview of all time - and eating books for breakfast
Welcome to the third instalment of my guest series, where for the month of April I have ceded ownership of this weekly culture download to some of the brightest and most curious voices in British culture.
The award-winning DJ, broadcaster and author, Annie Macmanus - aka Annie Mac - needs no introduction. Considered a national treasure both in her native Ireland and her adopted home of London, she is a fount - a literal fount - of knowledge on music, books, film and more. She also has an impeccably dry sense of humour, as you’ll glean from her recs.
As regular readers of Books+Bits will know, you do not get a lot of music in these weekly round-ups. Thanks to Annie, today you get tons: old names, new names, iconic names. Plus, loads of journalism recs, podcast recs, comedy recs, film recs and a pudding that she would make for you if she had you round for a dinner party which she won’t, because dinner parties stress her out. Featuring, amongst others, Ian McKellen, Michaela Coel, Stevie Wonder and Justin Bieber, this is another gem in a series of total gems.
Over to Annie <3
I have been a judge on the Women’s Prize this year. It’s been a sort of brain experiment, reading that much fiction (60- 70 books) in such a short time. My brain feels like it has expanded. Doing it at the same time as trying to finish my novel was what you would call in non-literary terms a head fuck, but I loved the reading so much.
I have found that I am able to sort of ingest books now. I fly through them. I have reestablished my old habit of going to the park just to sit on a bench to read. The long list is fantastic; such a brilliant range of writers, lots of debuts, some really small presses, some established writers, some word of mouth successes. The hope is that the prize shines a light on these authors, and gives them a path to writing as a full career. Here’s our longlist. The shortlist is being announced at 2pm this Wednesday.
One of my fellow judges, the hilarious and brilliant Cariad Lloyd, turned me on to the podcast, Diabolical Lies. Two extremely smart and well-informed friends Katie Gatti Tassin and Caro Claire Burke (the author of the upcoming tradwife novel, Yesteryear) dissect culture and politics through the lens of feminism - it’s my new favourite listen.
The episodes are remarkably well-researched and the rapport between the two women is so natural, easy and funny. You laugh a lot and you learn a lot. Some great episodes to start with include ‘Why America Can’t See Gaza’ and ‘Jeffrey Epstein & the Ordinary Misogyny of “Extraordinary” Men’.
I get so much joy out of the comedian Kyla Cobbler. If you’ve seen her live, or you follow her on Instagram, you already know. If you don’t, then expect a sound as fuck Irish woman pontificating about how it feels to be a woman, endorsing witchiness, natural faces, sturdiness and strength. I love how she angles her camera below her face, doesn’t wear make up, presents herself in her raw brilliance. This post killed me. (Ed’s note - am dying. My legs are also triple crossed.)
I host a literary salon at the London Irish Centre in Camden, which is deadly. About 300 cap, good Guinness, book chat and live music. I had Katriona O’ Sullivan on last Thursday. Katriona’s memoir, Poor, was in the top ten bestsellers lists in Ireland for three entire years, and was recently adapted into a play which is now playing at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. The live music was provided by a lovely Dubliner called John Francis Flynn. His voice is BEAUTIFUL - the Guardian described it as like, “old leather, blunt yet sincere, holding his notes like bagpipe drones, resisting all weathers”.
I’ve been listening to his two albums a lot recently and have become hooked on this one song called ‘Come My Little Son’. Written by Ewan McColl (Father of Kirsty and writer of Pogues song, ‘Dirty Old Town’) the song is written from the perspective of a mother telling her son why he doesn’t see his dad. Spoiler Alert: Dad’s working building motorways in England. I don’t know whether it’s because I am a mother of sons, or because my own father worked in England when I was growing up in Dublin, but the lyrics make me BAWL every time I hear it.
We have another literary salon happening on the 25th June, featuring two excellent Irish writers of literary fiction: Wendy Erskine (author of The Benefactors, which is longlisted for the Women’s Prize this year); and Eimear McBride, whose debut novel, A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing, won the Women’s Prize For Fiction. The event’s just been announced - can get tickets here.
Bieber at Coachella was cute. Good art should be divisive and I think his performance was artistic, especially in the way he handled playing his older songs. Sitting at a desk scrolling through YouTube on his laptop and bringing up videos of his young teenage self singing and then harmonising and ad libbing along with his younger self in the video. A sort of pop star version of Doll Therapy, played out live in front of millions.
I liked what Blindboy said about it, that his performance asks questions of what a live performance should be. Definitely more interesting than rolling out the choreo and playing Beauty And The Beat, as a thirty-two-year-old father of one.
I loved that he got Billie Eilish up on stage, and seeing her transformed into the Belieber that she once was. Fun Fact: Billie came on my radio show nine years ago when she was fifteen, and requested we play ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’ by the Baha Men because it was ‘a bop’. It was the first iteration of the word ‘bop’ I had heard and she had to explain what it meant to me. [Related listen: The Town on the Bierbernomics of Coachella.]
And if you want to feel life-affirmed at any point…