Send "Allo Darlin' " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Bbc |
 Allo Darlin’ is the performing name of the lovely and warming Elizabeth Morris (and accomplices), who moved to London from Australia in 2005. A few musical endeavours and quiet attempts at songwriting later, and she has become a new staple of London’s indie-pop carousel thanks to her prowess at crafting simple but thoroughly affecting and mature songs on the ukulele. If anything, it seems that the instrument’s pick-up-and-play accessibility has made the songs exactly that – accessible. Simplicity results in a clear, emotional and whimsical album. It’s almost too easy to call it twee.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....full text |
| Musicomh |
| Twee-pop has enjoyed something of a resurgence in the past 12 months, with the likes of The Pains of Being Pure At Heart and Standard Fare releasing albums that have been warmly received outside their usual fanbase. Elsewhere, Darren Hayman's on the mend and touring again after being attacked following a gig last year, and even godfathers of indie-pop The Primitives have reformed. It's all go, and the next band to strike while the iron's hot are key players in London's twee scene, Allo Darlin'. The half Aussie, half Kent quartet are stalwarts of the London club nights still shimmying to the delights of Sarah Records and worshipping at the altar of Belle And Sebastian, and were even courted by Radio 1 last year, with the release of their showcase single Henry Rollins Don't Dance. Anyone hoping for more of the same won't be disappointed by their self-titled debut, which is back-to-back kooky, intricate, light hearted tales of love and friendship, with a sprinkling of downbeat ukulele ballads. Opener Dreaming is unfortunate in that it shows how great they could be if singer Elizabeth Morris shared the mic more often. Its lyrics are typical of Allo Darlin', delving into a couple's differing reflections on a night out. It's a boy/girl recollection of discos, night buses and lust-fuelled longing. On a similar tip, fan favourite The Polaroid Song looks to Gorky's Zygotic Mynci for musical input and Camera Obscura for its themes - "We all looked so happy, like it was 1973....you said you'd been stock piling all the film that you could find before it all starts expiring and then there won't be polaroid anymore. Will we still look happy when we're not so overexposed?" wonders Morris. With layers of flute and an infectious shuffle-beat, it's four minutes of summer that would crack a smile on the moodiest of listeners....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| In April, Pitchfork's Nitsuh Abebe asked, "Have we reached some point where our knees jerk and we kick away anything any critic can write off as cutesy or 'twee' or associate with the wrong movies?" He had a point, of course. After a short burst of enchanting indie pop albums by Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura, the Boy Least Likely To, and many others in the mid-2000s, a cutesy sensibility has gone on to conquer the box office (Michael Cera, Zooey Deschanel) and the Billboard charts (Owl City). Faced with so much mainstream success, an anti-twee backlash was probably inevitable. Sure enough, the last couple of years have seen the Lucksmiths break up, Los Campesinos! say adios to their glockenspiels, and Jens Lekman fall oh so silent. Younger indie poppers like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Vivian Girls ramp up the rickety distortion, while Swedish labels like Labrador, Service, and Sincerely Yours have expanded indie pop's sonic and conceptual palette far beyond C86 and Sarah Records. No-frills twee-pop definitely never went away, but few new bands lately have resonated much beyond the scene. Say hello to Allo Darlin': a welcome reminder that any aversion to cutesy music in recent years may have been due not to the aesthetic, but the quality. The London-based foursome are firmly in the tradition of classic indie pop: Australian-born, ukulele-strumming singer Elizabeth Morris also plays in Tender Trap, the current band of Amelia Fletcher, an icon since her years in Talulah Gosh, Heavenly, and Marine Research, while bassist Bill Botting has backed former Hefner frontman Darren Hayman. The 10 songs on Allo Darlin's self-titled debut album, out in the UK on Fortuna Pop!, don't rewrite the formula for wistful bedsit charm as much as show that it can still be carried out masterfully....full text |
Allo Darlin' lyrics
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