English Teacher – This Could Be Texas

The album opens with the swooping sentimentality of Albatross – a masterful display of tension and release, feathery piano and guitar work gliding gracefully across the track before it descends into a whirlpool of hypnotic syncopation. The World’s Biggest Paving Slab follows – a seemingly mundane but actually brilliant claiming of personal abundance, in which Lily Fontaine puts their hometown of Colne on the map, delivering lines pertaining to Lancashire lore: 'I am the Bank of Dave, Golden Postbox / And the festival of R&B / And I'm not the terrorist of Talbot Street / But I have apocalyptic dreams'.

The band flip the central sentiment of Beyoncé’s most recent single on its head with title track This Could Be Texas, favouring chipper ivories and hopeful brass over scratchy acoustic guitar and a driving hoedown kick drum. Other highlights include the arcade machine intro and critique of ridiculous billionaire hobbies on Not Everybody Gets To Go To Space; the fragmented time signature and snapshot lyricism of Broken Biscuits; and the drunken drumwork and extraterrestrial soundscape of Sideboob. This debut LP sees English Teacher beginning to consolidate and take the already-delicious sounds introduced on their Polyawkward EP to even greater heights.

Listen to: The World's Biggest Paving Slab, Not Everybody Gets To Go To Space, Broken Biscuits