Hi, everyone. Ninethany Livestano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new English Teacher album, This Could Be Texas.

English Teacher, debut album, UK indie rock outfit, whose release here I was pretty pumped to listen to given that I enjoyed a few of the singles in the lead-up, like the cheeky commentary on romance and expressing love and infatuation on the song "RnB," which is matched with some grim post-punky guitars despite the title of the song.

There's also "Mastermind Specialism," which is a pretty decent piece of dauer slowcore that has a solid vocal performance attached to it, as well as some entrancing, plucky, clockwork-esque guitars. The instrumental gets thicker and more enveloping as the track progresses, too.

I was pretty excited to listen to this thing. And while it is not the most mind-blowing introduction to a band I've heard this year, it still has a lot of great tracks and is also an interesting look at what's floating out there in the indie soup at the moment. On top of it, if you've only heard the singles to this record so far, you have only caught just a fraction of the band's versatility, as you do get a little bit of everything on this record, from ornate art rock to dark and verbose Slint-esque diatribes, a few dreamy ballads, and more.

What you get really depends on the track and whatever emotions frontwoman Lily Fontaine seems to be feeling at the time. There is a lot of band chemistry and songwriting talent to be heard throughout this record, too. But English Teacher still sounds like a group that is yet to fully find their sound on some level, as there is the worrying intro track, "Albatross," which is a moody, spaced-out tone-setter with lots of sparkling guitars that go nowhere for three minutes. And for sure, while melodically, there is something to the Bowie-esque refrains on the track, "They said, Don't think you're special," which, again, nice, but the very gentle drums, quiet, glitchy synthesizers, and piano recital passages that play on top of all of that, aren't exactly inspired to my ears.

In fact, I would say there are at least a few tracks on this record where there's a bit of stiffness on the performance side that I think keeps things from going full throttle, really popping off. However, this could just be a first album thing, and most likely will smooth out over time, as there are plenty more moments on this record where the band is really in their bag, sounding tight, sounding visceral. Like with the combination of wet leg-esque post-punk musings and neo-psychedelic rushes of shoegaze guitars on the world's biggest paving slab, which works better than expected, considering the genre combination here. It's certainly an easier pill to swallow than the random hits of autotune vocals on "The Best Tears of Your Life," which sounds like Charlie XCX getting choked up over a low song, which I guess there's an appeal to in concept, but maybe not so much in practice on this song.

I get a lot more out of the driving indie rock riffs with more infectious spoken word passages on "I'm Not Crying, You're Crying," which I know this spoken word rock thing is very trendy right now, especially in the UK. But I do want to point out that English Teacher isn't just simply embracing this mode of lyrical delivery as a means of hopping on a bandwagon. They are actually saying something because this track is very much about a tendency to hide and bottle up one's feelings until maybe there's a point of overflow, you're breaking emotionally, and then the walls go back up again. And the performance on this track, of course, is just bursting with passion.

There are some interesting midpoint cuts on the record as well, like the title track, which not only has great winding baroque rock instrumentation attached to it, but it's also this quaint theatrical cultural commentary on the degradation of Western society, this UK-US connection being made in the midst of it, too.

And the second half features all these prog-leaning art rock guitar passages that meet a triumphant, whimsical finish that I think Black Country, New Road fans will most definitely appreciate. "Not Everybody Gets to Go to Space" brings those Slint vibes that I mentioned earlier, but with a fantastical angle to the storytelling side, given that we are talking about intergalactic space travel here with some tongue-and-cheek lyrics explaining why not everybody can go to space. Because if they could, all the bars would have lines, it would be less special, you're too busy here on Earth. There's a pretty powerful and haunting bridge on the track, too, and just shows that even in the midst of this absurd storytelling style, the band can actually bring a piece of music and some words that do come across as harrowing.

"Nearly Daffodils" is a killer punchy ranger with some lofi indie rock guitars that honestly is so good, it really could have ended the album, it really could have finished right there. I think it would have been just a fantastic way to end things as this record is already 50 minutes in length, which is big for a first impression.

There were so many great tracks up until this point that displayed a lot of creativity and dynamics already, but sadly, we go past this moment into a very so, so final leg for the record with the best tears of your life that I mentioned earlier, still not caring for the autotune vocals there. But even more hair brain to my ears was "You Blister My Pain," which is like an overly dramatic piece of spiritualized-esque space rock where the singing is most definitely off a bit. Meanwhile, "Sideboob" is another change of pace that reads as a bit of Twin Peaks-esque dream pop balladry with some decent boy/girl vocals. I could take or leave it.

The closer "Albert Road," I think, is okay. It's not the most stupendous instrumental here, but I do mess with the message as the track is very much about how society and the world can turn people bitter, hateful toward others without them even necessarily asking for it to be so. Instrumentally, the track finishes a lot stronger than it starts, and I feel like the opposite could be said of the record. It's really the first leg that is much stronger than the second.

But despite the bewildering lows throughout much of the record, there are some very strong highlights, and I think the album overall is still very much pointed in the right direction, and English Teacher, for me, is very much a band that we need to be keeping an eye on in the coming years, which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong 7 on this record.

See you next time, if there even is a next time.

Album, listen. Love it, hate it. Loving it. Forever.