Album Review: English Teacher - This Could Be Texas
English Teacher
This Could Be Texas
‘This Could Be Texas’ is sensational. A faultless and fearless album that is unafraid to challenge and move you in equal measure.
★★★★★
English Teacher are a band that refuses to be pigeonholed. With each single, EP release and glimpse of their debut album, they’ve subverted and exceeded expectations.
Debut EP ‘Polyawkard’ exhibited the band's unique blend of insightful observational lyricism, filled with riffs that merge funk and punk, whilst showing a group beginning to flirt with the idea of leaning into unfurling prog. Meanwhile, the standalone single ‘Song About Love’ united the group with renowned producer Dan Carey to create a lo-fi guttural punk song that played with the concept of a romantic pop song.
This brings us to their debut album ‘This Could Be Texas’. Over the last six months, we’ve been drip-fed several singles that hinted we were on course for an extraordinary and eclectic release. Now it’s here, it’s safe to say that across its thirteen tracks, the group have carved out a lane of their own, releasing a truly one-of-a-kind album.
The band is composed of Lily Fontaine on lead vocals (alongside guitar and piano), Lewis Whiting on Guitar, Nicholas Eden on bass and Douglas Frost on drums. The band all met back in 2018 at Leeds Conservatoire, where they were all students. Fontaine grew up in Colne, a traditional English town just to the west of Leeds. It’s these Northern roots that form the inspiration for large parts of the record.
Lead single ‘World’s Biggest Paving Slab’ is a behemoth. It immediately dispels any notions the group can be simply labelled as just another of the many exciting post-punk bands thriving throughout the UK. Admittedly the snaking riff and chasing drum pattern could segue well into a Fontianes DC or even IDLES track. When the track melds into its celestial chorus, you realise you’re firmly into unknown territory. Lead singer Lily Fontaine evokes Ellie Rowsell and Beth Gibbons with the lines “You should see my armoury, You should walk all over me”, her voice at this point a divine echo in which you can feel, not just hear, the emotive conflict evoked by her small town upbringing clashing with her dreams of grandeur.
Fontaine’s vocal dexterity and the group's refusal to stick to a set sonic template truly set them apart. With each track their instrumentation constantly evolves, creating a series of mini-epics as they constantly swerve from acoustic ballad, post-punk, grunge and even prog rock in the space of a single song. ‘Nearly Daffodils’ demonstrates the group's inclination for a breakneck time signature. The fast and loose, uncomfortable nature of the rhythm juxtaposed with Fontaine’s carefully spoken vocals on the track is thrilling,
The band are at their exceptional best when they lean into their progressive and atmospheric nature. ‘Mastermind Specialism’ shows the level of gravitas the group can command. The soft ballad introduces the theme of displacement and indecision that runs through the record. “Couldn't make a decision, On mastermind specialism” sings Fontaine on the track, later followed by the wonderfully phrased couplet “Pulled taut by the ultimatum, Maybe spotlights aren't for me”.
The album is constantly unafraid to challenge you. The jagged funk of ‘Not Everybody Gets To Go To Space’ grows to an unnerving whirlwind of descending chords clashing against fervent drums and scurrying riffs. ‘I’m Not Crying, Your Crying’ never relents from the first second, slowly filling your mind with its core mantra, Fontane unfurls a stream of consciousness across a garage rock guitar onslaught which shimmers like The Strokes. ‘The Best Tears of Your Life’ has an electronic flair as Fontaine lightly paints the chorus with a layer of unexpected autotune. ‘You Blister My Paint’ is fascinating and wouldn’t be amiss on a Norah Jones record with its soft jazz-pop sensibilities. An exquisitely tender track that utilises artful technical distortion and echo filters to alter the emotion of the chorus each time it’s delivered. It results in a soulful, unparalleled heartbreaker.
There’s even a romantic orchestral waltz in the form of the sublime ‘Sideboob’. The surprising track sees Fontaine serenaded by violins as she gives life to some of her most piercing, personal, lyrics on the record “You take every sunset, and somehow make it sexier, with your haunted asymmetry, someones brought a camera crew, they’re exploring your history, now your on the news, and it’s driving me insane, because everybody wants to climb you and they don’t even know my name” aches Fontaine paralleling both the eye of her affections heights and effect on her with the monumental scale of mountains, It’s all backed by beautiful vocals from the whole band adding rich depth to the sensual track.
The title track, ‘This Could Be Texas’ encapsulates the essence of the record with each of its elements firing off. The nearly 5-minute track begins restrained, featuring a soft piano melody which unfurls into a progressive psychedelic soundscape. It’s a three-part odyssey that remains cohesive despite frequently fluctuating from intimate to all-encompassing. At its centre lies the soul of the record, Fontaines' reflection on her small town that carries the weight of a planet. She has a way of creating characters and magic from the mundane of everyday life.
There is a sense of displacement that is explored frequently on the album. On the fluttering ‘Broken Biscuits’ Fontaine sings of one new pair of shoes breaking the bank, splitting up prescriptions like broken biscuits and the frequent disturbance of breaking riverbanks due to council disrepair. The cut-through in her lyrics is stark and it’s in no due part to her poetic delivery. Post-punk has leant on the trope of screaming disdain at the listener, English Teacher proves that well-placed emphasis and restraint can be far more powerful.
It all comes together on the sensational ‘Albert Road’ which closes out the album. Despite a strong sense of understanding the town she grew up in, Fontaine speaks of the friction of not quite knowing where she belongs. The places we come from can be ugly. Whether literally through years of community underfunding and crumbling infrastructure, or figuratively, where there’s a prejudicial undercurrent and a pointed edge you can’t quite put your finger on in the atmosphere. She beautifully articulates her hometown in these moments. She speaks of everything, warts and all. She doesn’t shy away from the cracks, she places a magnifying glass on them. It’s not to expose the shaky foundations but to highlight the people, places and moments that make those areas where we come from so strangely special.
On the track, she sings of the characters from her local pub in Colne, on the titular Albert Road. These characters on the track are unique to Fontaine but she makes them feel universal. We all know someone like Steve whose mate’s son used to play in The Fall. We’ve all seen the complex local romances unfurl in violence in the corner of the bar, and we can relate to ‘chips, gravy and cheese on your knees’.
Although it is utterly familiar to Fontaine, the lyrics paint a conflict of not feeling like you belong, not being like the others in your hometown. At the start of the track, she implores you to not take ‘their’ prejudices to heart, that ‘they’ hate everyone. By the rousing crescendo, she speaks of ‘our prejudices… we hate everyone… that’s why we are how we are’. It’s a story of knowing but not knowing where you belong, of feeling at odds with your community but at the same time feeling like it is your community.
As someone familiar with growing up away from the main cities of England, tucked inside one of the towns that have been left to rot by the political turmoil, austerity and pure neglect of the last thirteen years of Tory government. I would regularly feel displaced during trips to the capital and thriving metropolitan cities. Feeling as if the people around my hometown didn’t understand me yet not fitting in at these large and looming hubs of culture. So it’s hard not to feel a deep emotional connection to Fontaine’s words, nor have I heard the scenario described so accurately.
It’s a hyper-localised track with an intergalactic scope. Fontaine deftly describes her hometown with a light and restrained tone as the band's stellar instrumentation builds around her, rising like a tidal wave in the distance. Eventually, it surrounds you, and Fontaine’s vocals grow to meet it turning into a series of powerful exclamations, submerging you amid an incredible crescendo. It’s one of the most spectacular and surprisingly moving sonic moments I've experienced, a profoundly moving conclusion. Like, New York pioneers LCD Soundsystem or Yeah Yeah Yeahs before them, the group understand when to pull the rug from under your feet and overwhelm you.
‘This Could Be Texas’ is a faultless debut, to summarise it in a word would be to call it fearless. In its subject matter; both a bold condemnation of the state of a crumbling nation and an unflinching introspection of discovering where you belong. As well as in its instrumentation, eager to experiment, utilise nonconforming structures, willing to make you feel uncomfortable at times and knows when to strip things back or go supersonic. With this album English Teacher do something very special, they make the everyday feel interstellar.