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Dec 30, 2024 Issue #73 - Maya Hawke and Nilüfer Yanya By Mike Hilleary Photography by J. P. Dougherty

Searching their collective memory, the four members of the Leeds, England-based band English Teacher distinctly remember the time they once made a kid cry. “We were playing a show in Stockon and you could see him in the corner of the crowd,” recalls guitarist Lewis Whiting. “After the show his dad brought him to say hi and he was just so excited and shy. He was a big fan and he was crying. And so we signed the setlist. The whole thing was just…he was such a sweet kid. Just being on the other end of that, that someone could have that kind of reaction—it’s just the craziest thing.”

Huddled together around a couch in their rehearsal space, Whiting, lyricist/vocalist Lily Fontaine, drummer Douglas Frost, and bassist Nicholas Eden have been discussing various events and experiences that, despite their short tenure as a band, have started to make them feel like their career has shifted into a different kind of gear. In addition to making impressionable young fans burst into tears, English Teacher—much like their UK contemporaries Wet Leg and The Last Dinner Party—have emerged from the ennui of a multi-year lockdown and pandemic to deliver the kind of transgressive avant art rock that secures a slot at 2022’s Glastonbury as finalists in the festival’s Emerging Talent contest, performances openings for Yeah Yeah Yeahs, an appearance on the long-running BBC music TV show Later… with Jools Holland, and sold out headlining tours. Earlier this year, following in the footsteps of Wolf Alice, Arlo Parks, and Beabadoobee, English Teacher was even selected to serve as the Independent Venue Week Artist Ambassador for 2024.

All of this, of course, has been but a musical amuse-bouche to the release of the quartet’s debut LP, This Could Be Texas. Across often diverting polyrhythms, jangling punk guitars, and Fontaine’s barbed, sprechgesang vocals, the record captures a band that leaned into an existence unburdened by the day-to-day realities of the pre-pandemic world, utilizing government-mandated quarantine to tighten their individual musical articulations into a singular language. “I feel like we were lucky in that way,” says Frost. “We had this time to really just rehearse and figure out what we wanted to do. I think we found this sweet spot by mistake.”

Giving life to the band’s collective voice are the lyrics of Fontaine’s unique, observational perspective. While she is just as biting writing an ode to England’s romantic countryside and name-checking Mary Shelly and Lord Byron, snapping back at discriminatory racial comments (“Despite appearances, I haven’t got the voice for R&B / Even though I’ve seen more Colors Shows than KEXPs”), or making criticisms of Brexit’s underlying xenophobia (“Don’t take their prejudice to heart / They hate everyone / The world around them never showed / How loving can be fun”), perhaps Fontaine’s most salient throughline across This Could Be Texas is an overwhelming sense of doubt, anxiety, and not really knowing where you belong in the world. Like so many young people during the pandemic when you try to start something with the hopes of longevity when everything seems to be coming to an end, uncertainty becomes the most reliable thing in your life. Fontaine calls it living “in-between.”

“When we were writing and recording the album we spent so much time both mentally and physically stuck trying to make decisions and then worrying about those decisions as a band,” she says. “Despite everyone in the world being in various different positions, there are things that we can all relate to. Collective anxiety is definitely one of them.”

[Note: This interview was conducted before English Teacher won The Mercury Prize. This article originally appeared in Issue 73 of our print magazine, which is out now. This is its debut online.]

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