Broken Biscuits

"Broken Biscuits" is a track from English Teacher's debut album, This Could Be Texas. It finds frontwoman Lily Fontaine playing with the word "broken" in every conceivable context, from broken English to broken homes, broken phone and broken biscuits. The song is a kind of lyrical kaleidoscope where each twist reveals another crack, another fracture, another bit of life that isn't quite holding together.

Fontaine has a knack for turning the everyday mundane into something poetically charged. "Broken Biscuits" owes a particular debt to John Cooper Clarke's 1980 poem Evidently Chickentown, particularly its repeated use of the word "bloody." Much like Clarke's unflinching, rhythmic barrage of frustrations, Fontaine uses repetition to hammer her themes home. "I wanted to see how many different ways I could use the word 'broken,'" Fontaine shared with Billboard. "Then I was seeing how I could use all those different ways to relate to things in my life that were broken or that have been broken."

"Broken Biscuits" is the most personal track on This Could Be Texas, a sort of musical inventory of things that have come apart at the seams. And yet, for all its grim introspection, there are flashes of humor and light. For instance, Fontaine tucked a playful nod to the dystopian TV series Black Mirror among the broken fragments. Living room, Broke and Bones Scenes cut 'cause the copies cracked Smithereens across the carpet If you're a fan of Black Mirror, you might catch the sly reference to its creators, Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, who named their production company Broke and Bones. Also, "Smithereens" is the name of a Black Mirror episode.