There’s been a lot going on in Crotchety Land recently, and I haven’t been paying attention to what’s happening in the wider world. In particular, I haven’t been keeping an eye on the Mercury Music Prize. While I’ve been distracted, the winner of this year’s prize was announced around ten days ago. It was, of course, This Could Be Texas by the English alt-rock band English Teacher.

In past years, my faith in the Mercurys has been damaged by awards to the likes of Skepta, but this time they did us proud. The winning album is fresh, original indie rock; a product of rare quality in the oceans of mediocrity (and worse) we usually have to suffer these days.

“The music, meanwhile, seems to delight in continually throwing the listener curveballs; the melodies twist and turn in unexpected ways, there are proggy shifts in time signature, a folky bent coexists with electronica, garage-rock guitar riffs, what seems to be a dub-influenced sense of space.”

Alex Petridis in The Guardian

Fortunately, this album couldn’t be by Texas; it’s a cut above that. It sounds very much like Dry Cleaning, whose Strong Feelings was reviewed here in March 2021. In that earlier post I remarked, “… the band has been in the news a lot recently, and I have a feeling we’ll be hearing a lot more from them and about them in the months and years to come.” The same could be said for English Teacher, and I wish them every success.

In The Wizard of Oz, when the hurricane whisked away the farmhouse and dropped it in another land, Dorothy exclaimed, “We’re not in Kansas any more!”. She didn’t wonder if this could be Texas. But others have wondered what Texas might look like in days to come, when the U.S. feels the full effect of climate change. Here are a few possibilities: