This Could Be Texas

When it arrived in 2021, English Teacher’s breakthrough single R&B appeared to place the Leeds-based quartet in a jerky post-punk milieu alongside the likes of Black Country New Road and Squid. Perhaps tellingly, singer Lily Fontaine’s lyrics on the track acerbically detailed her experiences as a mixed-race woman in a scene almost exclusively populated by white males, and debut album This Could Be Texas found Fontaine and the group stepping away from their contemporaries into a far more diverse and interesting landscape. Over a backdrop that shifts between Pink Floydian piano revelry (“You Blister My Paint”), the rattle of early Smiths (“I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying”) Kate Bush-esque piano pop (the title track) and much more, Fontaine maps out a winningly original lyrical outlook that mixes absurdist surrealism with peculiarly northern English minutiae (the Magazine-like “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab” namechecks Charlotte Bronte, the Pendle witch trials and Dr Who actor John Simm). The sound of a refreshing new voice finding their footing.