English Teacher
This Could Be Texas ★★★★★ Island 5876407 (CD, LP)
This is one of the most confident and charismatic debuts in years. English Teacher, a four-piece from Leeds, are reluctant to be shoehorned into any “post-punk revival” tag, preferring (if pushed) “art-indie”, but such minutiae matter little when greatness is present. They have it. They crackle. They transcend, while catching a very real moment. “Not everybody gets a time to shine,” sings Lily Fontaine on Not Everybody Gets To Go To Space, but this is theirs.
From Charlotte Brontë to the Pendle witches, high and low culture are referenced as Fontaine switches between a searing, sensitive singing voice and a variation on the sprechgesang deployed by Dry Cleaning, Sorry and Yard Act. Nobody here thinks it’s uncool to be on the same planet as poetry. It flies, because the music finds new channels and permutations within the familiar: math rock jerks into punkiness, sad chanteuse ballads go prog for a bit. There are suspenseful builds and instant pop rushes. “Despite appearances I haven’t got the voice for R&B,” nods Fontaine, determined not to be a “diversity pick” yet addressing prejudice in shrewd, subtle lines. And while there are elements of Northern kitchen sink drama – imagine Arctic Monkeys playing their garage and lounge stuff at the same time – the words often veer into (effective, not indulgent) surrealism, adding the extra, indefinable dimensions which give you shivers.
The band’s singles have already shown they’re adept at exciting, self-aware adrenalin shots like The World’s Biggest Paving Slab and the addictive Nearly Daffodils (“it tears like a freight train through a christening”), while also blindsiding you with heartbreaking brooders like Albert Road and Mastermind Specialism. The album is intent on suggesting potential longevity, opening with Albatross, a plaintive, soul-stirring stage-setter.
I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying is everybody’s social anxiety underscored with bravado and the urgency of Penetration or Wire, while the piano-led This Could Be Texas questions the wisdom of crowds and, noting the everyday absurdity we normalise, rolls wordplay for the sake of wordplay around its tongue – “and the town is in a state, and that state is in a country, and that country’s in a bad state”.
Sometimes, the songs seem to cut up snatches of dialogue overheard in pubs (“Steve’s mate’s son used to play in The Fall”). They leap between the urban and the grandiose, finding and celebrating the elevated within the mundane. “Can the river stop its banks from bursting? Blame the council, not the rain...” That’s from the nervy, agitated Broken Biscuits, which coheres totally as its end section opts for The Velvets attempting the denouement of Aladdin Sane. You’re always kept guessing. You Blister My Paint is a scorching Edith Piaf-meets-alicia Keys ballad, lighters ironically aloft. Sideboob, relaxing over a highly original blend of 80s synth bed and languidly shuffling drums, invokes the spirits of Shelley and Byron while professing a love for someone who makes sunsets sexier. It’s somehow flip, shrugging and throwaway yet simultaneously as huge as a cyclone. This is what pop music can be at its best. This lit-rock is lit.
“The music finds new channels and permutations within the familiar... suspenseful builds and pop rushes”