24TH NOV 2025
It’s a cold winter’s night in Brighton. A crowd has gathered inside CHALK, a well-known and loved music venue in the city. The audience is made up of all ages, young to old – showing the global appeal of tonight’s act. The music begins. The room swells with the warm, almost ghostly sound of the track ‘This Could Be Texas’, the titular song of Mercury Prize winners English Teacher’s debut album.
As the band takes the stage and starts to perform, the crowd is transfixed. Lily Fontaine is undeniably a powerful frontwoman. She’s dressed casually – pinstripe trousers and a white baby tee that reads ‘TALK TO ME ABOUT PEARL OYSTER CULTIVATION’ – but this doesn’t in any way take away from her electric energy. The rest of the band are also nothing short of incredible (Nicholas Eden on bass, Lewis Whiting on guitar and Douglas Frost on keys and drums), blending spooky electronic sounds and deep basslines with lightweight, floaty piano tracks.
The second track, “R&B“, lifts the room’s energy immediately with its iconic and groovy bassline – it’s practically impossible to not bob your head along. The set takes us through the entirety of the band’s debut album, but we also take a rather exciting pitstop at two new songs – ‘Toothpick’ and ‘Billboards’, which the band play back to back.
The real highlight of the set, though, in my opinion at least, is the track ‘You Blister My Paint’, a melancholy piano ballad that shows Fontaine’s vocal chops. Her vocals are so strong and beautiful on this track it wouldn’t be surprising if there were tears in the house. As Fontaine laments about dreaming about a kiss for multiple nights a week, the crowd is transfixed with her angelic presence. Then comes ‘Not Everybody Gets to Go to Space’, one of the band’s more political tracks, commenting on class inequality. The song feels painfully relevant, talking about billionaires like Elon Musk being so rich they are able to explore space whilst average people are stuck on Earth submitting to work and manual labour in order to make a living.
We then get a few back-to-back high-energy songs – ‘The Best Tears of Your Life’, which starts slow but builds in anger and energy as it goes on, followed by the fan favourite ‘I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying’, and the band’s biggest single, ‘The World’s Biggest Paving Slab’, which boasts over 7 million Spotify streams and immediately gets the audience jumping and singing along. ‘Nearly Daffodils’ keeps the energy going, the crowd dancing to the addictive beat. Finally the main set closes with ‘Albert Road’, another slower track that builds to loud, vocally impressive belts from Fontaine that ring out across the room and lead to extended cheers and applause from the crowd.
English Teacher leaves the stage to chants for more. The set was incredible, but the talent of the band has left everyone craving a few more songs. The band complies and returns, but since they have already played their entire album, they treat us to two tracks from their early ‘Polyawkward’ EP – it’s clear the band’s sound has matured since these two songs were released, but nonetheless the performance is impressive and a great way to wrap up the gig. The room rings out in cheers. English Teacher are, undeniably, outstanding.
English Teacher Tour dates:
12/12/2025 Moth Club London,
19/06/2026 TRNSMT 2026 Glasgow
08/07/2026 Castlefield Bowl, Manchester
09/07/2026 Millennium Square, Leeds
10/07/2026 Alexandra Palace, London
Words: Katie Muckells
photo: Denisha Skilton
The Noise Exchange 