The band – Fontaine, Lewis Whiting (lead guitar, synth), Douglas Frost (drums, piano and vocals) and Nicholas Eden (bass) – began writing together after meeting while students at Leeds Conservatoire. Early support from local organisations Music Leeds, Come Play With Me and BBC Radio Introducing, who regularly played their earliest offerings and helped garner support for the band, led to a pivotal signing with indie label Nice Swan Records. During lockdown, English Teacher’s fanbase grew online and 2021 single ‘R&B’ had the music industry buzzing. A much-lauded debut EP, ‘Polyawkward’ followed, providing further insight into the diverse sonic and uniquely self-made aesthetic world of the band, and appearances at Glastonbury and Leeds Festival soon made English Teacher one of the most talked about bands in British music.
Since then, they’ve toured with Parquet Courts and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, played on Jools Holland, and sold out all their UK and EU tour dates as well as Elsewhere in Brooklyn, New York City. They’ve graced the cover of the magazine they used to spend their pocket money on as teens, NME, had single ‘Nearly Daffodils’ placed at number 7 in the top ten songs of 2023 by TIME Magazine, and more recently acted as ambassadors for Independent Venue Week (following in the footsteps of Arlo Parks, Wet Leg, Wolf Alice and Beabadoobee), in a nod to the grassroots venues where they learned their crafts.
Now, they’re about to release their debut album, This Could Be Texas. Representative of the four songwriters’ sonic journeys to date, some tracks were written at university in 2016-2019’s post-nestfleeing nostalgia, while others found themselves whole in the weeks before entering the studio. Listening to This Could Be Texas, it’s evident the band have spent a long time crafting the album, with its intricately layered and meticulously crafted melodies that explore far-ranging themes including social issues, struggling to belong, mental health and science fiction. As NME wrote in the band’s recent first cover article for the publication, their new music is a “bold, rhythmic, revamp,” drawing on influences as varied as “psychedelia to wobbly art punk.”
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