SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: ENGLISH TEACHER – THIS COULD BE TEXAS

ENGLISH TEACHER
THIS COULD BE TEXAS
ISLAND RECORDS

English Teacher has finally released their debut album, This Could Be Texas. This comes less than two years after their EP, Polyawkward. In anticipation, they also released a few singles. While this is a truly respectable album in terms of its ambition as a debut, the work is mediocre on its own, with some interesting concepts held back by poor execution.

This album starts off with “Albatross”, a generally fascinating song with a nice opening, but soon starts to feel quite dull as the songwriting fails to keep the song going smoothly. As this album progresses, this will become an even more pressing issue. While this album may have interesting ideas behind each track and how each plays out, most of the time, the songs start to feel more dull and lacklustre by the minute. The next track, “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab”, showcases unique sounds and beats, yet its uninteresting and eye-rolling lyrics overshadow them. Despite this criticism, there is one thing this album makes clear, just as their EP did. This band has potential, as they repeatedly demonstrated on Polyawkward, but it’s still evident that they require more time to really hit that mark quality-wise.

This Could Be Texas is certainly an experience, but it is generally a disappointment from start to finish due to weak concept execution and simply poor production. For instance, one of the better songs, “The Best Tears of Your Life”, despite its interesting and compelling lyrics and nice vocals, suffers from generic production and sound, resulting in sounds that are indistinguishable from any song you can turn on the radio, giving it a generic feel. If there was a major highlight, though, to the album, it would be the vocals, which are always stunning and so powerful, even with the poor production. Despite that, there is much about this album that could’ve been better. In my opinion, this album resembles a subpar version of their EP, Polyawkward, in every aspect. The album overindulges in experimentation to such an extent that it often overwhelms the art itself. Even taking these negatives into account, this band has a level of potential unlike possibly any other band out there, as shown by their previous EP and this album.

As many issues with this album as I have, I feel this album conveys to me that sooner or later, this band will become one of the biggest groups in the scene, not just referring to indie. The potential and concepts this band attempts are truly revolutionary and mind-blowing. As previously mentioned, the problem lies in the execution of elements in many tracks of this album, resulting in a disorganised and chaotic LP.

Overall, This Could Be Texas is an album that explodes with some heart and, at points, interesting vocals and songwriting, but collapses thanks to mediocre production and, at other points, generally dreadful lyrics and instrumentation.

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