MUSIC PREMIERES
“This is the fuckin’ biggest show of our lives,” says English Teacher frontwoman Lily Fontaine to a capacity crowd at London’s Electric Brixton. “This is rock’n’roll,” she continues, with the spirit starting to take over. “That rock’n’roll, eh?” now with an Alex Turner drawl, “it just won’t go away…”
The Leeds art-rock champs have every right to carry a little of that swagger of their Yorkshire indie peers tonight. The final night of their tour also happens to be the biggest headline show of their career to date, a victory lap for their universally acclaimed Top 10 album ‘This Could Be Texas’ – certainly one of the definitive debuts of the year, and perhaps one of the best of this decade so far. “There are quite a lot of you,” notes Fontaine, with the air ripe with a sense of occasion.
The show starts with the singer tottering on stage wearing one of the giant papier-mâché heads from the music video for ‘The World’s Biggest Paving Slab’, accompanied by a fitting Lynchian soundtrack. Here’s a band that follow their own script. Their originality feeds their energy on all sides of the spectrum, from the jarring and rollicking ‘I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying’ to when Fontaine takes to the keys for the beautiful ‘Broken Biscuits’
‘Not Everybody Gets to Go to Space’ ironically takes Brixton beyond the O-zone layer, while the intricate meanderings of ‘Mastermind Specialism’ keep the crowd enthralled without a whiff of being self-indulgent. “This is a love song,” says Fontaine, introducing ‘You Blister My Paint’. “We don’t have many of those, so excuse me while I get emotional”. And she does. In fact, she sings the absolute fuck out of it. “It’s about to get lairy,” she offers before ‘The Best Tears Of Your Life’, seeing in a series of wild peaks, complete with a spot of crowdsurfing for ‘R&B’; the band’s eccentricities never getting in the way of a good time.
We spot a nearby fan wiping the tears from their cheeks during a magnetic performance of the tender ‘Albert Road’, before Fontaine finds again that “dreams can come true” for a confetti rainstorm during the frenetic first set close of ‘Nearly Daffodils’. Returning for the encore of a wonkily gorgeous spin on LCD Soundsystem’s ‘New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down’. It’s been a journey in just over an hour, leaving you desparate to know the band’s next destination.
“Where do you holiday?” shouts someone from the audience at one point. “I don’t holiday, mate,” Fontaine smiles back. “I work. I’m a bad bitch”. English Teacher have been more than vocal in the never-ending battle for artists’ hard-work to be valued and compensated. They’ve put the hours in, and tonight it pays off. They’ll clean up at festival season and if there’s any justice they’ll be at least nominated for the Mercury Prize. The year could very much belong to English Teacher – the band keeping UK indie very safely out of that swamp.
‘The World’s Biggest Paving Slab’
‘I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying’
‘Broken Biscuits’
‘Not Everybody Gets to Go to Space’
‘Albatross’
‘Sideboob’
‘Mastermind Specialism’
‘You Blister My Paint’
‘This Could Be Texas’
‘The Best Tears of Your Life’
‘Nearly Daffodils’
‘R&B’
‘Albert Road’
Encore:
‘New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down’
MUSIC PREMIERES
Lykke Li didn’t hold back when speaking about the making of her sixth studio album, ‘The Afterparty’, during a listening session in Los Angeles earlier this year. “Let’s talk about the album. It was a motherfucker to make,” she admitted to the crowd. While balancing motherhood, the chaos of modern culture shaped by Trump and AI, and her own desire to create something more “extroverted, impulsive and chaotic” than ‘EYEYE’, as she previously shared with NME, the Swedish alt pop star arrived at a headspace that “feels like it’s 4am and the sun is going to rise”. The record captures that blurry final moment before regret, exhaustion and reality settle in, which makes it even more emotional considering she has hinted this could potentially be her final album.
There is something fitting about how brief the project feels. With only nine tracks running across 24 minutes, it never overstays its welcome. Lykke immediately drops listeners into the atmosphere with opener ‘Not Gon Cry’, painting a picture of those lonely early morning hours with the line, “No angels here tonight, no dancing queens.” Alongside the shadowy pulse of ‘Happy Now’ and the twisted disco energy of ‘Lucky Now’, she revisits the emotional yet dance driven spirit of her earlier material while blending in the sharper, more confident attitude heard on ‘So Sad, So Sexy’ and the shimmering influence of her 2019 Mark Ronson collaboration ‘Late Night Feelings’.
The emotional fallout begins to settle in quickly. ‘Famous Last Words’ carries a lush orchestral sadness as Lykke reflects on lessons that only came after years of chaos and late nights, confessing, “I had to crash and burn to tell the tale.” Then comes ‘Future Fear’, a delicate acoustic track with robotic textures that stares directly into anxiety and uncertainty with the chilling question, “I’m going to a dark place, do you need anything?” Meanwhile, ‘So Happy I Could Die’ glows like sunrise after a sleepless night, holding onto fleeting moments as she sings about “slipping through the hourglass”.
Throughout the album, Lykke Li vividly captures the beauty and wreckage of reckless nights with the vulnerability that has always defined her music. On ‘Sick Of Love’, she channels heartbreak into revenge, wanting to “make you beg for it” after rejection in a way that feels spiritually connected to Robyn’s ‘Dancing On My Own’. One of the strongest moments arrives with ‘Knife In The Heart’, a track that fully embraces her desire to become the “rock god” and “fuck boy” she spoke about, firing back at anyone who tries to tear her down with the words “you can spit, you can walk on me” while delivering one of the catchiest songs she has created in years.
Closing track ‘Euphoria’ leaves behind the same bittersweet feeling that runs through the rest of the album. With sweeping strings, pulsing beats and emotional intensity, Lykke Li reminds listeners that nothing lasts forever as she sings, “Player play your song, waste the night away”. Like the fading energy of the perfect night out, ‘The Afterparty’ ends in a haze of beauty and uncertainty. If this truly is her farewell, she leaves with one final intoxicating statement, though it still feels like there could be another chapter waiting.
