Mercury Prize: Indie band English Teacher win with debut album

The group were one of three acts from Leeds on the shortlist, alongside jungle artist Nia Archives and singer-songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae.

Fontaine said the band owed their career to the support they’d received from local venues like the Hyde Park Book Club and the Brudenell Social Club, whose owner was thanked in the band’s acceptance speech.

“If you look back over music from this country, Yorkshire in particular has thrown out some of our most prolific songwriters,” Fontaine said.

“There’s real support for musicians in Leeds at the moment.

“Venues are willing to take on new artists and I think that’s integral to the health of the scene.”

The band’s prizewinning album is steeped in Fontaine’s upbringing in the north west, addressing social deprivation and political mismanagement, alongside themes of identity, love, loss and celebrity.

Musically playful, it combines the singer’s partially-spoken vocals with dreamy, Smiths-like guitar lines and complex polyrhythms, with the gorgeous The Best Tears Of Your Life building to a head-spinning wall of sound.

Judges praised its “winning lyrical mix of surrealism and social observation,” saying it had a “subtle way of wearing its musical innovations lightly.”

The added: “This Could Be Texas reveals new depths on every listen – the mark of a future classic.”