English Teacher showed off their indie oddball talents at a hastily arranged show at Brooklyn’s Market Hotel, September 25. Packing Northern wit, Gen Z rage, sincerity and spilled margaritas into their show, the hour-long headline slot left the crowd excited for what’s next.
Having wormed their way through the crowd to get to the stage (Market Hotel seemingly has no backstage), the band opened with an accelerated version of “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab”, a salute for the downtrodden and middle finger to those who tread on them.
English Teacher come to the city weeks after winning the Mercury Prize, a Very Big Deal in the UK, for their debut album This Could Be Texas. They quickly apologized for canceling their recent headline tour “because they were tired.” This refreshing rejection of toxic expectations of the music industry can also be found in their work: during “R&B” singer Lily Fontaine fights the assumption that she should sing any particular genre because of the color of her skin.
The music is deeply rooted in experience, and there is sense of territorial ambiguity, or perhaps – despite a palpable attachment to where they are from – a yearning for pastures new. The work is largely rooted in the band’s home of the North of England (songs like “Albert Road” and “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab” reference local landmarks, cultural touchstones, heroes and villains) and yet there seems to be a westward gaze to the work. This is most apparent in the album’s title track, “This Could Be Texas”, which is vaguely set in the Lone Star State.
Guitarist Lewis Whiting, commenting to NYS Music after the show, said that even though “the music is very English,” its wider messages are still accessible for an American crowd. Members of the audience did seem confused by references to the band’s home county of Yorkshire; while there was general agreement in the crowd that “York’s a city I think, like New York I guess,” British concepts like the council – blamed for environmental destruction in ‘Broken Biscuits’ – seemed unfamiliar. Market Hotel patrons get a close-up view of Brooklyn’s JMZ subway lines directly behind drummer Douglas Frost, which throws English Teacher’s, well, Englishness into interesting graphic relief.
The band is composed of technically gifted multi-instrumentalists comfortable with complex rhythms and winding melodies. Strong musicality is not always enough to guarantee an edifying live experience, but English Teacher’s performance sidestepped many of the traps that befall successful recording artists when it comes to taking to the stage. They wisely recruited a fifth member to fill out the midrange with keys and cello and, stage access aside, Market Hotel is perfectly set up for high-energy acts like these, its trapezoid shape projecting force and sound out from the band and inviting back the crowd’s energy.
Singer and keyboardist Lily Fontaine is a convincing frontwoman and the spiritual leader of the group. She drives the performance, now conducting her bandmates, now interrogating them as if willing them further, higher. She waves her hands at each of the things she’s “not” on “I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying”, staring into the middle distance and apparently entirely absorbed in her experience.
There is rage in this music, with Fontaine seeming at points to dissociate into the memory of whatever transgression or crime has inspired her lyrics. At one point she muses that “maybe the spotlight’s not for me,” but while there is an awkwardness to her performance, it is an awkwardness that she wears comfortably. Fortunately for English Teacher, their bandleader possesses undeniable authenticity, that one quality totally essential to a convincing live act.
Some of the performance did feel rushed – there are times where you wish English Teacher gave their work some more breathing space. Songs could be extended to incubate their power and anger some before unleashing into the breakdowns that make the band so thrilling. You almost want a member of Phish, those wizened jam-band rockers, to throw a grizzled arm around these kids and remind them that the crowd is here for them; they can take their time; the people here can take it. This Could Be Texas, with its punchy second act math-rock pile-on, seemed primed for an 8-minute treatment.
The set was closed with the album’s swansong, “Albert Road”. The album’s final act sees Fontaine climb a rousing ladder of pitch-perfect semitone gasps, one final shot at lifting off out of this small, narrow-minded Yorkshire town and into outer space – or perhaps just Texas. Earlier in the show, Fontaine described how the band recently supported IDLES, English Teacher’s equally buzzy indie-rock contemporaries. She engages in some light patter with a member of the crowd, sips her margarita. Then Fontaine’s face drops; she becomes deadly serious. “But this is our show now,” she says. It certainly feels like it.
Comments are closed.