English Teacher’s debut album, This Could Be Texas, could be a contender for album of the year, and we’re only a quarter of the way through.
Melding post-punk talking, political music with strong bass licks, and Lily Fontaine’s dulcet tones and metaphorical lyrics reflect the theme of coexistence and simultaneous personality throughout the album.
Bursting on the scene with their EP Polyawkward in 2022, which immediately gained a place on NME’s 100 debut EPs, English Teacher have been on the up and up ever since. Featuring on Later… with Jools Holland in November of 2023, being signed to Island Records, and constant acclaim from DJs on BBC Radio 6 music - they’re living the indie quartet dream.
This Could Be Texas is 13 tracks of excellence, from the opener of Albatross, a prelude showcasing vocal, lyrical, and instrumental prowess to be expected throughout the record, to the cinematic closer of Albert Road - a stripped-back ode to growing up and coming of age in a small, judgemental town.
Despite their touring and escape from small hometowns, the band has incorporated a credit to where their roots are without being too big for their boots. The World’s Biggest Paving Slab, one of 5 singles already out, constantly references individuals and objects hailing from Lancashire, home to Lily Fontaine, just down the road from Leeds, where the band formed. This consideration of community and the nostalgia one may feel in being considered, even the ‘smallest celebrity’, in the same category as these famous faces.
As suggested through the love for our beginnings, a truly excellent aspect of this album is its down-to-earthness: we’re confronted with the juxtaposition of life and the rigidity of humans despite wanting to change in whatever way possible to fit in. Mastermind Specialism has the gorgeous refrain ‘bittersweet and less is more / damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ showing the confusion of humanity and misunderstandings that surface when multiple things exist at once.
The constant question of ‘what if?’ runs throughout this track in particular, perhaps a commentary on self-sabotage and rethinking every decision you’ve made. It’s so delightfully human to hear a debut album in 2024 acknowledge the trials of daily life without either overly simplifying or embellishing the experience.
But don’t worry - the existence of humanity is not all second-guessing and gloom. It’s also standing up politically, feeling enraged at the treatment of society by those supposedly in power. Track 3, Broken Biscuits (a name that puts me in mind of Pulp’s Misshapes) is all about this modern definition and usage of the word ‘broken’. It’s a belter of a song that incorporates saxophone over statements, the stand-out being: ‘Can a river stop its banks from bursting? Blame the council, not the rain’. It’s almost a tongue-in-cheek perception of those who don’t make an effort for feeling too small to make a change, an attitude that is miserably present in politicians and bigger beings.
The idea of being a small fish in a big pond is explored further in the titular track, which argues the connectivity of everything you do to a bigger outcome - you put a letter in the postbox, which goes to someone’s house, in a town, in a state, in a country … Everything small we do has a larger outcome. This is somewhere between optimistic and depressing, I think, because we have the power to make a domino effect, but it still has such a distance to travel. To me, this is the epitome of this album - a lovely meeting point of doom and gloom of modernity, while enjoying the ride we’re on.
English Teacher clearly feel a great passion towards their work, using it to amplify their own experiences, in the case of R&B, a revenge song about finding your space in the world even if it defies the odds and expectations made for you. But outside of the themes of anger and uncertainty, we are gifted beauty. Sideboob is possibly my favourite on the album - a gorgeous song that could be a four-minute instrumental and used in a David Lynch film, or kept as is and played over a montage in an indie love film - has the best lyrics I’ve heard all year:
‘Someone’s brought a camera crew / they’re exploring your history. Now you’re on the news and it’s driving me insane ‘cause everybody wants to climb you and they don’t even know my name.’
For a band who have been likened to groups like Black Country, New Road, since the start of their career, English Teacher have certainly created an individual space shaped just for them.
‘That’s why we are how we are, and that’s why we don’t get very far’ is now a deeply ironic line - English Teacher have embarked on a journey to greatness from small beginnings, and they’ll only continue to get further and further.
"THIS COULD BE TEXAS"
TO BE RELEASED ON 12 APRIL 2024
