Gig review: English Teacher at Rock City

If the appeal of Leeds band English Teacher were distilled, a lot of it would probably come down to a balance between storytelling and skill. 

Storytelling is what a lot of bands from the north of England excel at after all, whether we’re talking about Joy Division’s poems of inner turmoil, The Smiths’ vibrant character studies, or (early) Arctic Monkeys and their observational lyricism. 

The writing of English Teacher’s Lily Fontaine is no exception. Her lyrics read like poems filled with motion – dynamic, topical, and grounded in the cultural memory of Yorkshire. It’s top-grade song writing that earned the band a Mercury Prize last year.

It’s also clear though, that the band want their complex instrumentation to feel like as much of a ‘story’ as the lyrics – and also be as catchy as hell. They don’t want anyone to confine them to either the storytellers camp, or the instrumental-virtuosos-from-the-Leeds-Conservatoire-camp. And seeing them live – those precepts are played out right in front of you.

I arrive in Rock City excited to see the band do their thing, as I’ve been awed by many a YouTube video (particularly the KEXP performance of Nearly Daffodils, which Lily probably hasn’t seen (if you know you know)). I’m kept in suspense for a little longer though, as their support act – The Orielles – come onstage.

Formed in Yorkshire, and composed of Henry Carlyle Wade on guitar and synth, Sid Hand-Halford on drums, and Esme Hand-Halford on bass and vocals, The Orielles made their name as purveyors of groovy, disco-informed indie pop. 

This performance, however, is soaked in the darkness and abstraction of their latest record: Tableau. Through the spacey shoegaze of Beam/s, and the Radiohead-tinged guitar patterns of Three Halves, the band play onstage in a pretty hypnotic way.

Esme solemnly sings over her resonant bass riffs, Sid plays disorientating, ‘push-pull’ rhythms with zero effort, while Henry plays guitar while constantly moving, but still not quite ‘freely’ – like a coiled spring. Seeing The Orielles definitely comes recommended – nowadays, they seem like they couldn’t know themselves as artists any better.

A few people probably go to an English Teacher gig expecting high-energy, slightly shouty guitar pieces, as for a while the band were boxed in with what was sometimes described as a ‘post punk’ revival closely following COVID, in the form of bands like Fontaines DC, Squid, Black Midi, and Black Country New Road.

English Teacher has songs that you could bracket under that sonic umbrella, but seeing them at Rock City, it’s clear that they kicked down those barriers quite a while ago. They emerge onstage, to raucous applause, and open with Albert Road which is (initially) one of their more subdued songs. 

A folk song about Northern sensibilities and Lily’s mixed-race background, it highlights her staggering range, as she goes from basically murmuring the first lyrics (“three rocks short of a dry-stone wall”), to her voice filling the entire room (“and that’s why we don’t get very farrrr ahhhhh!”). 

Things don’t get that much more guitar-y as the gig goes on, even as the instrumentation feels almost physical. There’s a hard-to-define quality to how the band play together, and arrange the setlist, which conveys to you the intentions they probably had. You’re not really meant to dance. Instead, you’re invited to admire how beautifully complex and colourful everything is.

When they play Broken Biscuits, these qualities come through, with Lily jumping on the piano elevated above the rest of the band. This highlights the almost orchestral staging, featuring the four core-band-members, and touring musician Blossom Caldarone. Throughout the piano and guitar textures and imagistic lyrics all swirl together like an impressionist painting. 

The band later treats us to two new songs titled This Is a Good Age and Billboards, both of which sound truly special – suggesting their song writing will only continue to come into its own. 

In a few songs, like You Blister My Paint, drummer Douglas Frost ditches the kit and plays some lovely piano parts underneath Lily’s soaring vocals. For me, this only drives home the point made by the broader show: this Mercury Prize winning group aren’t afraid to deliver some more introverted performances and reject public appetite for that amorphous, ‘post punk revival’. 

But every band needs their closing anthems, and for English Teacher that comes via the one-two-three punch of R&B, The World’s Biggest Paving Slab, and Nearly Daffodils. 

A special shoutout goes out to guys in the band for the last of those three. The drumming is like machine gun fire, while the bass line is tailor made to blow the minds of most indie-rock fans (like me). Played by Nicholas Eden, who stands there like it’s nothing – he makes his bass sound like a synthesizer with fretboard tapping, creating a swirling line that carries you through the song like a fast-flowing river. And if you think it sounds cool on your phone it sounds even better live, I promise. 

The band exit offstage to lots of love, taking it and accepting it with smiles and their charming, self-effacing way of presenting how ridiculously good they really are. Just over a year from their Mercury Prize win, it’s clear that they’ve taken critical and public acclaim and ran with it, playing exactly the songs that mean most to them while constantly representing the place they grew up. Although that might not yet have led to sell-out tours and widespread mainstream acclaim, those in-the-know are aware that they’re along for a very special and exciting ride.

English Teacher performed at Rock City on 13th November 2025. 

@englishteacherband

@theorielles