The Cover Uncovered: English Teacher’s ‘This Could be Texas’
One of the great casualties of the streaming era is album artwork. Truly, one of the great joys of discovering an album used to be losing yourself in an iconic image as the album played, reading the liner notes, and discovering the little easter eggs the artist would leave right where no one would think to look. Fortunately, there are a number of artists who aren’t so much refusing to adapt to the times but making sure that the idea of album art adapts to the times as well. One such band is English Teacher, with their stellar 2024 debut album, This Could Be Texas.
Amidst an otherwise idyllic, soft-focus painting of an English countryside, complete with adorable, fluffy sheep front and centre, is something that really draws the eye. An almost Salvador Dalí-esque shape floating in the air.
Gunmetal grey, shaped like an enormous ear and strangely liquid, with what looks like a guitar neck complete with tuning pegs jutting out the top. Like a pastoral, folk-horror version of Tubular Bells’ cover with more farmyard animals. You can keep your moody black-and-white photos of identikit indie band number 12 leaning against a wall. This is more like it.
It’s almost a throwback in the way it should be pored over while ‘I’m Not Crying, Your Crying’ blares out the speakers, the viewer imagining what it could possibly be depicting. Fortunately, our very own Elle Palmer sat down with the band last year and ended up discussing it, so here are a few hints.
For one thing, the art itself is particularly close to the band, as it’s a collaboration between singer Lily Fontaine and her mother, Gilly. The pastoral scene is a work Gilly painted in the 1980s, depicting the Ilkley Moor Cow and Calf Rocks, a few miles northeast of where the band formed in Leeds.
In a post on Twitter/X detailing the post, Fontaine called her mother’s art “a foundation of consistency throughout a childhood of relative displacement”. So, it was important not only for her work to be a part of the project but also that it depicted a place the band feels they can call home. Then there’s the… well, whatever that is in the middle.
That’s not me being ignorant either; Lily herself said on the same thread that “I don’t know what it is”, and she drew the thing! She settles on it being a representation of the band itself, namely “Some sort of musical meaty machine.”
Whatever it is, it’s gone on to be something of a mascot for the band, with a full-on sculpture of it created for the album’s release in the spring of 2024. I don’t know about you, but I’d take it over Iron Maiden’s Eddie any day of the week.
Seriously though, this is exactly the kind of artwork that we should be making space for in an era where music has become less tactile than ever. Pieces that unify the themes of the album, bringing them all together and making a record that’s more than streaming data, but, like This Could Be Texas, a full-on artistic statement from one of the most exciting bands in the country.
