Rising Leeds indie band English Teacher have this morning announced their biggest UK tour to date with no less than 15 live dates right across the country. They will be opening up here in Brighton at the popular Concorde 2 venue on Wednesday 8th May courtesy of JOY. promoters. The tour is titled ‘This Could Be Texas’ and this is the name of the band’s debut long player which is set to crash land on the 12th April.
English Teacher fans will be keen to find out that there is a special pre-order link on the band’s website which states the following:
“Pre-order* your copy of English Teacher’s forthcoming album ‘This Could Be Texas’ in any format by 12:00pm GMT Tuesday 23rd January 2024 to receive an exclusive ticket pre-sale link for English Teachers UK spring tour 2024! You will receive your pre-sale link by 17:00pm gmt Tuesday 23rd January 2024. The pre-sale will be live from 10:00am GMT Wednesday 24th January 2024 to 9:59am GMT Friday 26th January 2024”.
Full information on this can be found HERE.
General sale tickets will be going on Friday 26th January 2024 at 10:00am from HERE.
English Teacher are certainly going places and we have had the pleasure of witnessing their live performances on a number of occasions. One of these was in Suffolk last July at the ‘Latitude Festival’ – here’s an extract from our account:
We were thankfully remaining put in The Alcove tent for the next scheduled act, who were Leeds indie band English Teacher, which consists of Lily Fontaine (vocals, rhythm guitar, synth), Lewis Whiting (lead guitar), Nicholas Eden (bass) and Douglas Frost (drums). They were in Brighton just a couple of weeks ago when they were on the bill with Paolo Nutini and The Big Moon at Stanmer Park on 8th July (Review HERE).
The quartet take to The Alcove stage bang on 8pm and entertain the punters for the next 41 minutes. English Teacher take the everyday, even mundane subject matter, and weave storytelling lyrics into their songs. Lead singer, Lily Fontaine, uses different vocal styles between songs and even within songs, often incorporating spoken word. A prime example of this being tonight’s track six, ‘Broken Biscuits’, which vocally falls in the same territory as Dry Cleaning. Some of their material leans towards an off-kilter post punk screaming guitars and solid drumming delivery. They can get raucous when required, with Lily even briefly playing her guitar with a beer bottle. I reckon the late great John Peel would have enjoyed English Teacher.
English Teacher are trying out new material on the punters in order to gauge the responses. Unfortunately Lily omitted to tell us what this brand new song was called, but they have since informed me that it’s called ‘Nearly Daffodils’. It benefitted from some usual bass guitar playing where it almost sounded like a keyboard and the latter vocal section reminded me of Poly Styrene from X-Ray Spex. It appears that I find myself enjoying English Teacher’s newer material and thus they are (for me) heading in the right direction. Their popular ‘A55’ tune (number nine of tonight’s set) went down well and they bowed out with ‘Good Grief’, which has a drumming pattern similar to The Jam’s ‘Start!’.
