Ignored             Obscured              Restored

One of the contemporary groups I’ve been listening to lately is the British indie rock band English Teacher.  Their debut full-length album, This Could Be Texas, was released this past April.

Today’s SotW is one of the singles released from the album – “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab.”

This is a sharp, emotionally layered track that balances jangle-pop textures with post-punk grit. It stands out for its blend of wiry, math-rock-inspired guitar work, rhythmically propulsive bass, and frontwoman Lily Fontaine’s emotionally nuanced vocal delivery.

I am the world’s biggest paving slab
But no one can walk over me
I am the Pendle Witches, John Simm
And I am Lee Ingleby
I am the Bank of Dave, Golden Postbox
And the festival of R&B
And I’m not the terrorist of Talbot Street
But I have apocalyptic dreams

You should see my armoury

So, what are all those namechecks — Pendle Witches, John Simm, Lee Ingleby, the Bank of Dave, the golden postbox — threaded through Lily Fontaine’s lyrics?

They may seem cryptic at first but, after some research, they appear to form a tightly woven map of Northern England identity.  These aren’t random cultural ephemera; they’re landmarks in a specific psychic landscape: Burnley, Lancashire, and the wider, often-overlooked North of England.  The Pendle Witches evoke a legacy of persecution and outsider status, while actors Simm and Ingleby represent local talent that’s slipped quietly into the national consciousness.  Dave Fishwick’s grassroots financial rebellion and the Olympic postbox gilded for civic pride round out a portrait of a region that celebrates both the mythic and the modest in equal measure.

Fontaine isn’t just listing trivialities — she’s capturing the strange folklore of her own upbringing, where the surreal and the everyday coexist on the same street.  These references become signposts in a song about stasis and disconnection, grounding its themes in real places and faces that feel half-remembered, half-legend.  The metaphor of the “world’s biggest paving slab” suggests feeling pinneddown — as if a literal weight is holding the narrator in place.  It’s a powerful image of emotional inertia: being crushed not by drama or trauma, but by the slow, suffocating weight of the ordinary.

If you dig indie rock, I urge you to give This Could Be Texas a full listen – more than once.  It is one of those rare albums that reveals more with every listening.

Enjoy… until next week.