The album release of last year, so the lumbering press juggernaut would have had you believe, was the Rolling Stones Hackney Diamonds. Reviews were favourable, given the coffin-dodging antics of the Glimmer Twins, Jagger and Richards, and the passing of their well-loved drummer, Charlie Watts.
All of which is sad because it’d be a poor state of affairs if that was the best the world had to offer: raucous yet formulaic water-treading such as you can find in the corner of any pub, any night in any town. And the cover looked like my mam having a dabble at photoshop in the care home.
As Malcolm McLaren once said: Nostalgia is dead tissue.
English Teacher: young, gifted and Tykes
By contrast, English Teacher, a Leeds four piece fronted by Lily Fontaine, have produced an invigorating, literate and tuneful Gen Z romp which does that thing records used to do when all we had to worry about was nuclear war.
What’s especially appealing about This Could be Texas, is that not only have they made something which recaptures the feeling of excitement and substance which pointed my generation towards something better, but that they’ve done it in a way their musical ancestors never could.
For a start, there’s a stereotype-busting sensibility about their approach. Lily’s lyrics, persona and expression all add up to an assertive statement by a young, Northern woman of colour. The lyrical content contains allusions to the Brontë’s, the Northern landscape and pop culture. All these songs are ABOUT something recognisable in our everyday experience.
This marks a sharp contrast to the affectations of decadent nihilism from the likes of current flavour of the month The Last Dinner Party (who supported The Rolling Stones a few weeks after their first gig, doing nothing to allay suspicions that they’re well-connected poshos with nothing much to say).
Lily Fontaine: grounded, insightful, resistant
Inevitably, Lily is the focus, and she projects an image of grounded millennial insight: On Albert Road, she seems to have taken a look around her and nailed the bitterness brought about by low-expectation Brexit-leaning North:
That’s why they are how they are
And that’s why they don’t get very far.
The video to Albert Road makes this allusion clear: Lily being pushed around by pissed-off white people in a pub but still driven by a vision of something hopeful and beautiful, transcending her surroundings.
The music biz, like the society it reflects, can be a harsh environment for women, but Lily gets round this by constantly changing her appearance as if to say you know what YOU can do with your stereotypes. Though Laurence Fox would seethe at the wokeness of it all (where is that ‘difficult’ second album Lozza? I could do with a laugh), this sensibility is definitely strong in a whole crop of female artists who refuse to kowtow to objectification: Arlo Parks, Little Simz and Katy J Pearson spring immediately to mind, to name but three.
Ironically, the rest of the band (Douglas, Lewis and Nicholas), conform most to type, looking as if they’ve come straight from central casting (“I NEED THREE WEEDY LOOKING INDIE MUSOS, PRONTO!!!”) but it’s refreshing to come across musicians who don’t equate edginess with tattoos. And besides, Lewis’s guitar ( a Fender Pawnshop Supersonic, since you ask), looks ace. Such things matter.
The forward-thinking sound
Sound-wise, what comes across is that this is a band who’ve LISTENED: there’s been a lot of music made since Elvis walked into Sun Studios to make a record for his mam’s birthday, so there’s rich pickings for young bands of what to aspire to and also, more importantly, what to avoid.
Sometimes it’s a post-punk (hate that term) angular guitar sound reminiscent of The Fall which is no bad thing. However, English Teacher don’t seem limited by this and the album’s strength is its ability to combine sweeping atmospherics with acoustic washes knitted seamlessly with a touch that makes the whole shebang forward-looking rather than Desperately-Seeking-Retro.
When Jagger and Richards met on Dartford station, one holding a guitar and one holding an import copy of Chuck Berry’s Rockin’ At The Hops, their interest in the past pointed towards a more exciting future.
This Could Be Texas takes 70 years of rock-n’-roll-based pop music and creates something which could only come from the North, NOW, while not being limited by any of it. As Lily explains:
“I want this album to feel like you’ve gone to space, and it turns out its almost identical to Doncaster.”
A blast of fresh air from off the tops, as they say. Make sure you put your big coat on and breathe it in.
