ENGLISH TEACHER struck a chord with their sparkling, sardonic debut album – the shock winner of last year’s Mercury Prize. Coping with flux and fame has tested the limits of charismatic singer Lily Fontaine, but she’s not complaining. “I thought I’d have to work in pubs and takeaways forever,”

she tells DORIAN LYNSKEY.

HOW TO DESCRIBE THE MUSIC OF ENGLISH TEACHER? THE LEEDS BAND’S debut album This Could Be Texas – released last April to a chorus of approval – is an improbable, shape-shifting beast, taking in statuesque riffs, choral synthesizers, mercurial time signatures, spiralling chamber-pop, frantic stream-of-consciousness, glittering ballads, and flinty Lancashire sprechgesang. Each song is its own little realm which sets its own rules and breathes its own atmosphere. What do they say when a stranger asks what kind of music they make? “Alt-rock with extra, sometimes unnecessary steps,” offers guitarist Lewis Whiting.

Somehow it all hangs together remarkably well. Whiting, singer Lily Fontaine, bassist Nicholas Eden and drummer Douglas Frost credit producer Marta Salogni with the sonic threads that subtly unite the songs but the real glue is Fontaine, by turns surreal, sardonic, compassionate, brutal, commandingly wise and all at sea. “Thematically there was intention and narrative,” she says. “A lot of it is about home and questioning what is home. The idea of the in-between: not feeling like you’re in one specific place or one specific person – culturally, racially, sexually.”

You might just call it “English Teacher music” except that they all regret choosing that name. “I think all band names are inherently bad,” reasons Whiting. “Arctic Monkeys is an awful band name. But it becomes its own entity.” “It’s a shit name,” allows Eden, “but it’s fine.”

They’re a self-deprecating bunch. “We weren’t that confident about the album,” says Whiting. “I thought it was going to go down like a fucking lead balloon. Literally until it came out I was convinced it’s too much, it’s all over the place.”