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Morris is affectionate to the city that bore the album, but constantly aware that there's much more in the world to discover. The album's most bittersweet moment, Let's Go Swimming, goes beyond that inevitable twee tag to reveal something more plainly affecting. She beautifully describes a lake in Sweden and then reels off a list of London stereotypes that couldn't possibly compare to it. "All of the hipsters in Shoreditch could never style it," is the line that rings most truthfully here, but the whole song is lovingly rendered, caked in gliding slide guitar and feathery bass. A special recording.
Though inevitable comparisons to fellow Aussies The Lucksmiths and The Go-Betweens will undoubtedly accompany Allo Darlin' wherever they are heard, they are possessive of something quite different to those bands. Having hailed partly from another country and inhabited London so roundly and fully (or so it sounds), they have the benefit of being able to step back from these locales and comment more widely on those themes of loneliness and inability to fit in.
The boldest of those themes, perhaps, is a sense that their professional endeavours are futile when they could be earning a packet doing something else. Not that you'd be worried about when they're making it sound so wonderfully bright and easy. Kiss Your Lips is the twee template executed perfectly. Weighing up lyrical unease with musical joie de vivre is a sure-fire way to involve the listener, and the struggle of part-time musicians it ably references rings true.
Between the bounce of the lighter numbers and the ache of the sweet ones, there's all manner of winningly realistic insights veiled underneath the music. This debut is a joy from beginning to end, a fully-formed talent at the first attempt–as rare as it is welcome.
--Daniel Ross
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
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Customer Reviews
London-based Australian Elizabeth Morris fronts the band's infinitesimally twee, but thoroughly charming, indie, and along with one fellow compatriot and two more local lads they repeatedly land soft punches somewhere between the cute jangle of Belle & Sebastian and The Shop Assistants. And it's all delivered via Morris's fragile timbre, the frailties in which culminate on "If Loneliness Was Art" when she sings, "Somehow you've convinced me that I'm pretty when I'm not".
The Allo Darlin' catalogue speaks of harmless, summery tails - exploits in Paris, holidays by Swedish lakes. Yet, Allo Darlin' are resolutely a product of the UK, and specifically the London they all call home. In the laid back "Let's Go Swimming", which details that time in Sweden, constant withering comparison is made to "All of the punks in Camden ... / all of the hipsters in Shoreditch ... / all of the bankers in Moorgate".
The bass-line borrow in "Silver Dollars" seems to belong to "Brown Eyes Girl" allowing for the album's breezy qualities to develop. There is also a seam of tristesse interwoven into the band's fabric, sometimes surfacing unexpectedly, and at other times more explicitly. On "My Heart Is A Drummer", for example, Morris takes the part of an unnamed partner answering her own questions about smoking. "Baby, my heart is as strong as a drummer" the unknown partner replies. Morris's response is to state, perhaps tellingly, that she is stronger still.
It's fair however to say that there is an element of novelty to the record as first exemplified by the band's questionable name, but also in some of the saccharine lyrics. Amid minimal ukulele and pedal steel accompaniment, "Heartbeat Chilli" talks freely of culinary coquettishness, "I was in the kitchen ... making chilli / you came in with an onion and got dicin' / it seems silly that this chilli has two heartbeats in the recipe".
Though imperfect, Allo Darlin' deliver their material impeccably, flying flawlessly in the face of the annoying whimsy to which it would have been easy to succumb.
Advised downloads: "Let's Go Swimming" and "The Polaroid Song".
Fave tracks are 'If loneliness was art' which has been a single and is sublime in its imagery and haunting piano riff. I love the way Elizabeth Morris uses everyday items as comparator in her lexicon of poetic references, and this is true throughout except maybe track 8, 'Let's go swimming' which is a great summer song. The one which always gets me though is 'My heart is a drummer' which I said immediately I heard it was 'Girls just wanna have fun', but I have since learnt that this is on purpose as a tribute to Ms Lauper.
This is a great offering from a London based band who whilst they might still be learning their trade do show a promising future beckons and if 'Silver Dollars' is anything to go by (ie autobiographical as it tells of the financial woes of being in a band) then they could do with your hard earned sheckles so go on spoil yourself and get a copy.
Comparison to Camera Obscura and B&S are accurate but still comes across as very original
Plus i love the reference to... Read more
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