Great album front to back, but the final two tracks, Blackpool Illuminations especially, cap it off masterfully. Early AOTY contender for me, closely followed by Nadine Shah’s Filthy Underneath.

I bet!

I’m an Eastern European leftie whose peasant ancestors (not all of them, obviously) suffered through famine, unspeakable state-sanctioned violence and extended prison terms during Stalinism and through decades of opression afterwards. The intergenerational trauma is something we’re all still struggling with. I cannot bear to hear the “Well, you need to break some eggs in order to make omelette”-type of negationist twaddle and I’m reminded daily of how the authoritarian postwar regimes have made it damn near impossible to resurrect the Left in the region. Don’t just fuck tankies, feed them rancid cum only.

I got plenty of gripes with Signal (acting like a de facto proprietary app, backing up horrendously difficult, gimping the Android options in order to get to “feature parity” with the less developed iOS app, serious UI/UX missteps - the bubbles colouring debacle, no AMOLED mode etc.). Having said that, I let everybody know it IS my main messaging app - if they want to reach me, that’s where I’ll be. I do still use WhatsApp (barf!) and Slack, but exclusively for work-related stuff and I force close them the minute I walk out the office (if something blows up, a good, old-fashioned call will do). People who really want to keep in touch will eventually use an encrypted app, even if begrudgingly.