Live Review: English Teacher - Roundhouse, London 25/11/2025
Last year’s Mercury Prize winners English Teacher stunned Camden crowds, delivering an out of this world performance to bring their largest tour ever to an end.
Emerging with their remarkable debut album This Could Be Texas in April last year, English Teacher was a revelation. Art-punk, indie rock, post-punk: they’re a band that refuses to be boxed. Having all met at Leeds Conservatoire, in 2018 the four-piece formed the band Frank, a markedly different dreampop outfit that changed dramatically before playing their first gig as English Teacher in 2020. This journey paved the way for the success they’ve encountered since; it’s their sonic freshness that played a major role in This Could Be Texas winning the coveted Mercury Prize in 2024, the album noted for its wit, depth and its fresh take on a guitar band.
Taking such a universally-accredited and musically intricate album on the road was never going to be an easy task, particularly whilst embarking on the band’s biggest headline tour to date. The 11-date UK stretch has taken the Yorkshire-Lancashire band across legendary venues from Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom to Manchester’s Albert Hall, and ending with two consecutive nights this week at the Roundhouse in the heart of Camden. Providing support for English Teacher across the majority of the tour were the West Yorkshire band The Orielles. Originally forming in Halifax in 2018, their particular brand of indie rock opened the Pandora’s Box of genre-defiance that later English Teacher would open once more. With shades of shoegaze, elements of prog, and punk and grunge tinges, The Orielles warmed up the crowd with an undoubtedly experimental, alternative sound. Under glistening lights, swirling synth ostinatos evoked the extraterrestrial, with tracks such as ‘Beam/S’ spiralling through unconventional song structures, shifting tempos and time signatures to great effect. Onstage the three piece channelled distinctly different energies: guitarist Henry Wade was a ball of energy, writhing and rocking to and fro as his Fender Jazzmaster propelled every track forwards, whilst drummer Sidonie Hand-Halford’s presence was stately yet fierce behind the kit, and finally bassist/vocalist Esme Hand-Halford’s voice was serene and her playing grittily measured.
“This song is new; it’s about a wasp” Henry notes as the band launch into ‘Wasp’, the first of a few tracks from their upcoming album Only You Left, releasing in March next year. With a mean, grungy guitar riff, the band weaponise jagged dissonance at will, at one devastating point bordering on bitonality between Esme’s gliding vocals and Henry’s playing. The more nostalgic feel of ‘The Room’ sees Henry trade guitar for synth in a poppier track closer to their original sound established on 2018’s Silver Dollar Moment. But as their set comes to a close, out comes the glitch pedal and a sludgy guitar tone for their last song ‘Three Halves’, another from their forthcoming fifth album. As Henry exclaims “love you lots” to the crowd, they begin a sweeping journey through fast, slow, soft and heavier sections, all guided by Esme’s heavenly voice and each bandmembers' individual virtuosity. They left the stage having won numerous new fans - myself included - and raised excitement for what Henry termed English Teacher’s “beautiful set” to come.
As the lights dim to riotous applause, an instrumental intro marked the Leeds bands’ entrance onto the stage. The lone piano that opens ‘This Could Be Texas’ began the show with innocence, just Lily Fontaine’s soft northern-hued vocals and lightly twinkling keys. Her spoken word performance was enthralling, a true poet whose words were weighty, knotty, and drew the crowd’s attention immediately. The reoccurring line “Walk through the heather” was commanding, spurring the crowd and the band into the dynamism of the track’s dramatic B section. Soon all were drowned in noise, from guitarist Lewis Whiting, drummer Douglas Frost, and bassist Nicholas Eden to Lily herself. Cellist Blossom Caldarone added the wondrous final touch, adding another dimension of serenity, a vibrant royal purple to the band’s musical palette.
As fading cheers echo by song’s end, next up was the fan favourite ‘R&B’. Beginning its life as the first single released after the band’s post-punk transition to English Teacher, the track explores Lily’s experience being pigeonholed as a mixed race musician. “Despite appearances I haven’t got the voice for R&B” she exclaimed, casting a long shadow onto the Roundhouse’s curtained backdrop as she sang the impactful track.
English Teacher’s genre-blending fluidity translated into an onstage energy like nothing else, delving back into Pandora’s box of music genres to fish out the unexpected and surprising with great effect. Unorthodox techniques such as frenetic cello slides and guitar strums from behind the nut feature as ‘R&B’ transitions straight into the driving instrumental of ‘Yorkshire Tapas’. The angular guitar riffs and wailing crescendo of the subsequent ‘Broken Biscuits’ was but a premonition of the experimentalism of ‘Mental Maths’, with its chaotic, rapidly shifting tempo and time signatures. Gone were softly bowed notes, Blossom’s cello was now a frenetic vessel for tension and fury. Drenched in turquoise light, the glorious polyrhythms of ‘Albatross’ later were a reminder that at their core, English Teacher are a band of innovators and boundary-pushers in the UK indie rock sphere.
To great intrigue, the Mercury Prize winners played two new unreleased tracks that night. “This is a new one”, Lily announces, looping a sample of her vocals that whirrs in the background of the entire track. With a characteristically snappy title of ‘Toothpick’, the track’s interplay between guitar, piano and bass created a sound brighter than most of This Could Be Texas. With no announcements about the band’s next project thus far, a potentially upcoming sophomore album remains shrouded in mystery. Nonetheless, the track’s warm tones were fitting for a likely release amid brighter days in the new year. As synth arpeggios looped and layered in their next track ‘Billboards’ - another unreleased song teasing the band’s exciting future - the band remained awash in the green and blue hues of Spring.
It was a signal of intent to sell out two nights at the iconic Roundhouse, a stalwart for cultural production and vitality in North London, and the band took their musicmaking seriously. English Teacher’s ornate compositions necessitated a level of surgical precision that flowed into a calculated professionalism with each nailed tempo change, rapid-fire guitar riff and syncopated bassline. Yet the sparkling moments of dry wit scattered across This Could Be Texas still shined through. ‘Not Everybody Gets to Go to Space’ drew wry smiles with Lily’s candid delivery of lines like “Because if everybody got to go to space // All of its bars would have a line”. Later, all of us sing in powerful unison “I am the world’s biggest paving slab - so watch your fucking feet”.
The unforgettable ‘I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying’ flooded throughout the room mere moments after the killer ending of the California-tinged ‘Best Tears Of Your Life’. Lily’s stirring vocals had been rousing the crowd all night, from the grand, sustained high notes of ‘You Blister My Paint’, to the quieter, half-sung, half-spoken words of ‘Sideboob’, and yet here she was at her most impressive. Almost breathless, she barrelled through: “I’m not her, I’m not near, I’m not hear, I’m not there, I’m not sorry, I’m not out, I’m not loud, I’m not holy, I’m not lonely, I’m not ready, I’m not steady”. The result? Rowdy applause from all in the circular venue.
This breakneck pace was continued in ‘Nearly Daffodils’, and the entire band seemed to enter a state of musical nirvana, in complete harmony with all around them. Apt yellow flashes blared into the cheering crowd, as Lily visibly vibrated with energy. Intense, rapid-fire, and moving, it’s a song that reminds me of ‘Weird Fishes/Arpeggi’, but if it had a northern cousin that then wove a beautiful metaphor about growth, relationships, impermanence and the change of the seasons. There was only one more song left: the triumphant ‘Albert Road’. Named after a street in Lily’s hometown of Colne, Lancashire, the exploration of fragmented upbringing, belonging, and close-knit, but closed off communities came to a head with Lily’s rising outcries in a breathtaking release of emotion. The final song of their album, the final song of their main set across the tour: it was cinematic, cathartic and impactful.
For a tour celebrating their Mercury Prize-winning album, it was then a bold move to finish their show with two tracks from before their debut album made the four-piece a household name. But as the four band members strode back onto stage, they had already played every track from This Could Be Texas. Their encore began with ‘Polyawkward’, from the 2022 EP of the same name that saw them land the major label record deal that birthed This Could Be Texas. It’s a haunting, irregular track that shifts from questioning acoustic guitar one line to huge, aggressive distorted guitars the next, unsettled as Nicholas becomes increasing frenetic on the bass. By the third verse, when the song’s namesake of “the Polyawkward man” emerges, synth ostinatos and descending basslines signal a climactic ending in proper post-punk style. Hands over ears, Lily screams. We roll into the existential ‘A55’, as its melancholy guitar riff resonates across the circular theatre. English Teacher’s final track saw a masterful balance between seeping angst and the unstoppable momentum of a speeding steam train. As the track opened up and broke down, the Phrygian dominant scale (the one that Hollywood wants you to think sounds Middle Eastern/North African) came alive on Blossom’s cello, forming a moment of pure cataclysm to end the night.
It was a privilege watching music this good, and this unique, from amongst such a large crowd. As Lily quipped during their set, “We’ll see you when we’re headlining - what’s the big one? Alexandra Palace? The O2?”. Having already achieved so much in the short time since their debut last year, the band’s upwards trajectory is sure to propel them to even larger stages when they next visit the capital. For one of Britain’s most innovative young bands, the future couldn’t be brighter.
Words by Taran Will
Photography by Harry Wassell
