ah good tip! But I’m firmly over in the Cornishware camp now, got this last week - made in England, 12oz so commands a decent glug, and crucially has that same weightiness as the now Partridge-approved French cookware merchants

Yeah it’s probably not a sensible entry point but equally sensible entry points are a bit overrated anyway, hope it lands for you!

Hahaha a classic Foster compliment that requires it’s own footnotes and annotations! Glad that you enjoyed it sir

and released today, Ship Sket - part of the NW underground tho originally from Dorset - making mind bending, nocturnal, gothic and loose sounds sharing the unsettling spirit of 2000 Fall way more than 6Music spiky post punk imitators (tho that seems to have calmed down)

youtu.be/9kNJg1g73Bg?...

and finally, this mix from arguably the definitive White Hotel DJ Tom Boogizm is completely stacked with the Nagle era material and really worth your time

www.nts.live/shows/tom-bo...

I kept listening over and again to this version of Hot Runes, which was scrapped and has completely different lyrics, read by Julia Nagle, clearly informed by the Fall’s financial crisis which was impacting everything during those years

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxcN...

crucial here is Smith appearing in Mark Aerial Waller’s short films Glow Boys and as the spectral Caterer in Midwatch (sample dialogue: “these conditions are worse than in Nelson’s time”, Smith: “in Nelson’s time there *were* no conditions!”

not quite at scale to be meaningful yet but watching videos of PinkPantheress this week in New York (bringing Zohran Mamdani on stage) and she pioneers quite a cheeky, chic version of 2020s Brit identity. Also not a new export but Oasis have worked overseas in a totally different way in 2025 too.

I worked for DMs in the shops then, think the logic was they would bank the short term dosh from aggressively upselling the “for life” deal and people were supposedly unlikely to come good on the promise. Sadly the shoes are so cheaply made now that it probably works out quids in for them.

interesting too as like, conventional UK indie is actually far more healthy in 2025 than it has been for years - The Tubs/Ex Void, Westside Cowboy - its interesting about all sorts of British class dynamics that there’s this need to outsource it to some fairly miserable gentry types

Two years on, I have sadly no reason to believe that any of his three wishes expressed during that concert - breaking America, duetting with Taylor Swift, working with “rappers” - have come true, but I hope he has a happy birthday

Megan Kenyon at NS recent piece is the most authoritative profile I’ve read covering enough of his biography and politics, tho everything I’ve read is blurry on his 2010s political activity

www.newstatesman.com/politics/gre...