More about: English Teacher

I was on my third or fourth listen of Polyawkward and having a doom-scroll through Twitter when a post caught my eye. “I saw that there’s this band called English Teacher…” it read, “and you’re not gonna believe what they sound like.”

I clicked onto the thread — as the sinewy vocals and metallic jangle of percussion on the EP’s third track ‘Mental Maths’ crept through my headphones — and found the replies were laced with a similar sort of sanctimonious cynicism. “As someone mostly into the post punk wave thing we’ve had the last couple years: let’s shut it down” said one, “Let me guess. Wet Leg?” read another.

At a time where social media and the self-anointed upper echelons of the music press are awash with similar jibes at up-and-coming bands on speedy upward trajectories, it came as no surprise that English Teacher’s stellar run of early releases had dragged in the sceptics....this post was merely one in a string of coy critiques of the UK music scene’s current leanings towards spoken-word vocals and sulky guitar lines. 

But, the more I listened to Polyawkward’s intricate and endearing five-track expanse, the more the Leeds-based four-piece proved that — rather than losing its voice as some have claimed — doomy and droll sprechgesang stylings might be on the verge of a bigger and even more compelling renaissance.

Gnawing through a neatly assembled plexus of razor-sharp (and darkly comedic) lyrics, sinewy spoken vocals and see-sawing percussion, Polyawkward blends the anxieties of navigating life as a young twenty-something with more terse social issues and quasi-political debates — and all with deft precision. 

Jittery melodies overflow into painstakingly textured blasts of instrumentals on title track ‘Polyawkward’, while ‘A55’ unfolds like some sort of warped Homeric Epic, had the ancient Greeks had a word for “beer fear”. On ‘Mental Maths’ vocalist Lily Fontaine jeers like an antsy ringleader, before boasting her breadth as a poet as well as a songwriter on ‘Yorkshire Tapas’ — a spoken word poetry piece that nods to the band’s Northern roots, the romantic implications of a trip to IKEA and a night of pool and pints in the local. 

A sure highlight, though, comes in the form of ‘Good Grief’ — a shrewd satire of England’s miscalculated public health initiatives told as a blossoming romance between star-crossed lovers Track and Trace. Melding quick-witted references to pop culture with a more sincere political memorandum — and coming as perhaps the only song written about COVID that is both funny and timeless — the track hurtles towards a twitching maelstrom of clattering cowbells, jittering feedback and cymbal beats that resound louder than the futile 8pm claps of meek-minded politicians on their doorsteps. 

The Quietus’ Fergal Kinney dubbed the current surge in bands who speak instead of sing as “landfill sprechgesang”. With their satirical fictional characters, newsy political commentary and ready-made string of slights from the depths of the Twittersphere, English Teacher could well have been right on course to be plonked in Kinney’s neatly confined box of “sonic cliché”. But on Polyawkward — a deft and daedal debut from a band who have already shown they’re capable of much bigger — English Teacher prove that sprechgesang is destined for a lot more than the scrap-heap. 

Polyawkward is out now. 

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More about: English Teacher