English Teacher: "Amy is one of my biggest influences. I started as a singer by imitating her"

When you’re sixteen it happens once a week, when you’re sixty about once a year. No, not that! I’m talking about how often you giddily fall in love with a band and obsessively want to tell the world about them.

Currently I’m on month four of informing everybody I know - and a good few I don’t - that their lives will be greatly enhanced by copping an earful of English Teacher. Hot Press readers were the first to get harangued in January when, minutes after seeing the quintet for the first time at Eurosonic in Groningen, I gushed: “It’s indie but not necessarily as we know it with the likes of ‘Mastermind Specialism’ and ‘A55’ as musically adventurous as they are lyrically dextrous.

“The Leeds combo’s none too secret weapon is Lily Fontaine, a singer capable of going from the proverbial whisper to a scream and whose ruminations on the absurdities and obscenities of modern life – ‘Bring out the dead and give them a hashtag’ –reminds this punk veteran of X-Ray Spex’s Poly Styrene, which is one of the greatest compliments I could pay anybody.”

Listening now to their phenomenal debut album, This Could Be Texas, I was if anything being mean with my praise.

From swoonsome pop opener ‘Albatross’ to the closing ‘Albert Road’ which builds and builds… and then builds some more, this is a record to file alongside Franz Ferdinand, Up The Bracket, Silent Alarm, Parachutes and Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not as one of the great 21st century debut British rock records.

And I’ll fight anyone who says different!

This Could Be Texas cover art.

“That Eurosonic gig was amazing,” Lily enthuses when we catch up in English Teacher’s rehearsal room. “We were back in Groningen a couple of weeks ago with SPRINTS who are really good mates of ours. There were two shows where we swapped with them, but it was mainly Karla and the lads playing second. We came on stage and did ‘How Does The Story Go?’ with them ‘cause I really like that song. Then Sam from SPRINTS played drums on two of ours, ‘Song About Love’ and ‘R&B’. Karla and me did a version of ‘Chaise Longue’ as well. It was two weeks of non-stop laughing and drinking. I can still feel the hangover!

It’s at this point that I realise Ms. Fontaine is wearing a Liverpool scarf, which is extremely offensive to a long suffering Everton supporter like me.

“Sorry,” she apologies. “I was expecting to get a ‘Hey!!!!!’ text from Karla and Jack from SPRINTS who both support Man United after they beat Liverpool but they’ve obviously taken pity on me.”

While sonically they have little in common, Lily has the same knack for describing people and places as Bruce Springsteen. This is especially evident on ‘Albert Road’, a song about her hometown of Colne in Lancashire, which includes “Three rocks short of a dry stone wall/ Steve’s mate’s son used to play in The Fall/ Primary colours on their way to the public house/ To break up a fight between a mistress and her mother and her lover and his spouse” among its wonderfully evocative couplets.

What was life like growing up in Colne?

“My friend sent me a video the other day of someone who feels a weird sense of comfort walking around their hometown even though it’s a bit of a shithole – I think that sums it up,” Lily replies. “There are certain areas of Colne that struggle and could do with some care. On the plus side, it’s set in this beautiful rural landscape and has all these weird and interesting characters living there. Growing up, I found a real sense of community doing open mic nights in the pubs. The song’s a bit of a stream of consciousness but it’s quite literal. It’s referencing things that exist in the area, which I kind of love and hate in equal measure.”

On the equally scene-setting ‘Broken Biscuits’, Fontaine darkly intones: “Mum’s bones are breaking/ And there’s cut-outs in the photographs/ So we’re splitting our prescriptions/ Like they’re broken biscuits.”

How autobiographical is it?

“Very,” she says quietly.

Is it fair to say there were difficult elements to her childhood?

“Yeah, that’s how you become a writer, I guess,” Lily resumes. “The song has a lot of repetition around the word ‘broken’ and that sums up what my childhood was like. It wasn’t fun but I am grateful that the things I went through have allowed me to become successful in a career that’s pretty difficult to get into.”

Lily’s desire to get away from Colne and pursue her musical dreams took her to the posh sounding Leeds Conservatoire.

“It was called the Leeds College of Music when I went there and it wasn’t that posh,” she laughs. “I was always singing, singing, singing as a teenager – it was my part-time job at the weekend and I was constantly going to see indie bands. I went to university thinking, ‘I’ll become a backing singer’ and was told, ‘You’re not very good, you need a lot of training.’ So I tried the writing side and I loved it, it just clicked. That was the catalyst for me getting a band together.”

Asked whether she found moving to Leeds liberating, Lily shoots back. “Yeah, absolutely. I was dying to leave home for years. At 15 I was saying to my mum, ‘Why can’t I go to boarding school?’ I always wanted to be in St. Trinian’s. I was able to reinvent myself a little bit and became part of the massive musical community in Leeds, which is quite incestuous but good!”

Another This Could Be Texas standout is the title-track, which has an orchestral swirl at the end redolent of The Beatles’ ‘A Day In The Life’.

“I’m so glad you said that,” Lily beams. “That’s my favourite Beatle song and why there are those big swelling moments in our songs.” Lily was, to put it mildly, blown away when English Teacher got to record in Abbey Road.

Do those walls ooze rock ‘n’ roll history?

“Yeah, it’s helped by the fact that they’re covered in pictures of all the legends who’ve recorded there. I couldn’t help thinking, ‘This is the room where Pink Floyd did Dark Side Of Moon and Amy Winehouse sang her duet with Tony Bennett.’ That bit where she says to him, ‘I’ve never sung with one of my idols before’… oh my God! Amy is one of my biggest influences. I started as a singer by imitating her. As a songwriter and a person, I loved her. I’ve never watched the Amy documentary because I think it would make me too sad.”

Amy Winehouse.

It appears that I hit the nail on the proverbial when I also compared Lily’s lyrics to Poly Styrene who, along with Chrissie Hynde, Siouxsie, Jordan, Pauline Murray and The Slits, made sure that ‘70s Britpunk wasn’t a male only affair.

“I’m always singing ‘Oh Bondage Up Yours!’ in my room,” she says referencing Poly and X-Ray-Spex’s debut act of defiance. “I only found out about her after I left uni. Her lyrics are really inspirational and I love that it wasn’t always perfect when she sang. The emotion and just going for it in a song is more important than technical perfection. “I actually auditioned to play Poly in a biopic. I thought my impersonation of her was really good but I didn’t get it.”

We demand a recount! Lily is also a fully paid-up member of the John Cooper Clarke Appreciation Society.

“John and Benjamin Zephaniah both had a very direct influence on me wanting to write,” she reveals. “It wasn’t until he passed away that I realised how much of Benjamin’s stuff I know off by heart. My Mum got me his poems when I was five or six, which was good parenting! I also love the Scottish poet, Carol Ann Duffy. ‘Valentine’ by her is what got me into poetry. She’s got another really funny one called ‘The World’s Wife’, which I did for A-Level.”

Earlier Lily mentioned Wet Leg who, along with The Last Dinner Party, have been branded “industry plants” by indie puritans. It’s telling that they all happen to be women. “The more important conversation is about misogyny in the music industry, which both of those bands have experienced and is disgusting,” Lily reflects. “There’s also a lot of racism and mistreatment of people of colour in the industry. There needs to be a focus on misogynoir, which is the unique kind of misogyny that impacts people of colour and is a uniquely difficult experience.

“The main thing is the lack of people of colour in non-performance roles such as managers, label heads, promoters. We still have a long way to go in terms of representation for non-white people and non-white women especially.”

Not a fan of Rishi Sunak and his goons at the best of times, Lily was furious last month when Conservative Party donor Frank Hester made his odious “You just want to hate all black women because she’s there” comments about Labour MP Diane Abbot.

“Is anyone gonna do anything about this?” Lily tweeted. “Islamophobia? Rife. Anti-black racism? Absolutely normal? Fuck the Tories, man.”

And so say all of us.

“I was in a really bad mood for a week,” Lily adds today. “Still not over it to be honest. With stuff like that there’s the initial disgust and then there’s a need within me to try and do something about it, especially having the tiny platform we have. I told the boys, ‘We should see if there are any anti-discrimination campaigns we can get involved with’. I did a tweet about it but it doesn’t feel like enough. I could write an essay about how angry I am.”

Has she been involved in grassroots activism before? “Yeah, one of our shows in Liverpool was put on by Music For Many, an organisation run by Jeremy Corbyn’s team. I’m always very vocal about the fact that I hate the Tories. I don’t know who I’ll vote for this time because there’s been a lot of issues in Labour as well.” English Teacher first came onto the Clarkian radar last year when they performed a stunning version of ‘The World’s Biggest Paving Slab’ on Later… With Jools Holland.

“Starting out I just wanted to be in a band,” Lily concludes. “I never expected to be on Jools. It’s got massively out of control! I didn’t like my performance because I was shaking and my voice wasn’t doing its full thing but, yeah, everything’s been crazy since then.”

• This Could Be Texas is out now on Island Records. English Teacher play Whelan’s, Dublin on May 22.