Music, Style & Culture

Allo Darlin: It’s Been Quite A Year

We catch up with the gang ahead of their final gig of the year...

It's been quite a year for Allo Darlin'. Fresh from touring the States, and gaining critical acclaim with their eponymous debut album, DIY caught up with the gang ahead of their final gig of the year...

So, obvious question first, how did you come up with the name Allo Darlin'?
That was from when Elizabeth worked in a sound production studio in Berwick St, and she'd have to walk past the market traders every morning. They'd all be saying 'allo daaaaaaarlin' every time she walked past. The original band that she was in was called The Darlings, but she got this vaguely threatening email from this American punk band, saying, in a really punk way of course, cease and desist. And although The Darlings was a great name at the time, there's no other member's left now anyway, so it seemed appropriate to change names.

You've just returned from touring the States, how did that go?
Stonking! Elizabeth and Paul had been to America before, but as kids. So for us to all go together as grown ups, and not have to fuck about not being able to drink... Half of us have gone from never having been to America. to having been three times in a year, East Coast, West Coast and Texas, it's exhilarating. Whenever you go somewhere new, your senses go into overload, and you're like, a road sign! It's so weird seeing these things here! A “Restroom”! Argh!

It just adds to the joy, because it's such a fun band to be in, and it just feeds that heady euphoria. And it's really cool playing shows where people are seeing you for the first time. Because over the last 18 months we've played so much in the UK, we have great relationship with the people that come to our shows, and so we've ended up knowing a lot of them. Then you go to the States and you don't know anybody there, and you have to make sure you work really hard to put on a great show. Which obviously we always do anyway. We're still at the level where we're running the merch stall ourselves, so we get to meet the audience. It's exhausting sometimes, but in America, people travel for a few hours to see a show, and because of that, you meet people who say, “I've travelled down from Vancouver because I can't stop listening to this record”. It's just the highest compliment someone can pay you, really.

There's this one guy in the States, and he came and saw us at Popfest in May, and then three days later, he was at a show in New Haven, and then we saw him again at a show in New Jersey, and then again in Berlin. And that was when we got the restraining order.

But it's nice to have fans! And you got some pretty good recognition out there, you were on the cover of the New York Times?
Yeah! It was a larger article on Popfest, but they put our photograph on the front page of the Arts Section. We heard about it a few days after we'd played the show, so that turned into tequila night... luckily it was our night off. And it was just this really surreal thing, this amazing thing, the first we knew was when Elizabeth got a text message from her mum in Australia to tell us. It was this weird filmatic sequence of events, we started getting the text messages as the rest of the world was waking up, but we're going into night time in America, and it's like it's filtering around the world. We felt like it was like that scene in Rocky and all the papers are spinning around. Except there's just one. We're still waiting for the front of Variety and Time.

You made the Rough Trade Albums of the Year...
REALLY??! Wow! How many did they pick? Are Girls Aloud number one?

I think it's out of 100. But The School are about four places above you. Do you feel the competition?
Yes! We did our first tour with The School, and there was so many of them and so many of us, and it was just silly, giddy, exciting. It was genuinely like a school trip...

Now that you're home for a while, is it time to start recording that difficult second album? Are you going to work with Simon Trought as producer again?
We'd like to, we're at the stage where we're setting a date to talk about it. We're entertaining the idea of recording it in the summer or late spring next year, and we're also entertaining the idea of recording it in the States rather than at Soup Studios this time. We're hopeful, anyway, it's a pipe dream. We might need to actually find a big pipe and push the instruments through – I reckon we'd only need one about 4000 miles long. So we'd like to take Simon to the States and do it there if we can...

I do have a reader submitted question, from a Mister D. Hayman of London. He'd like to know if your new song 'Darren' is about him?
Does he think we're being coy about it? We have explicitly said that the new song is about him, while on stage, a number of times! But I think the thing is, it's about Elizabeth's relationship with his records – it's not about him, it's not a character assassination, he can relax. We're not trying to take him apart.

He described hearing it as like being in 'Being John Malkovich'. Any chance you could do it with a marionette Darren on stage? I need revenge. He once made me sit through the entirety of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music...
I've done that a few times!

...live.
Oh god, I haven't done that. But you know that thing where someone draws something, and then you pass it to the person on your left, and you end up with a bastardised beast? Everybody's done that, right? We sort of used to do that with music and videos. So one person would supply the VHS and another the record, and you'd put them on at the same time with the film on silent. We once did Ghostbusters to Metal Machine Music... it didn't improve it. We just got very drunk.

One final question. DIY was at the Cambridge show where Mikey (drummer) failed to make an appearance after falling off his bike. So in the interests of public safety, we feel it prudent to check, do you own a cycle helmet now?!
YES! I bust my head open! But, in the last week, something weird has been going on with my scar on my head, it's started hurting again. I think I'm turning into Harry Potter and something bad is going to happen...

It was strange, I really didn't care about me, and normally I'm not altruistic at all, I'm all about me. I was just really bummed not to be playing the Cambridge show for some reason, I can't remember why now, but I'd just bashed my head. I was sure I could make it, I couldn't drive, and there was blood pouring down my face and I couldn't remember what I was doing yesterday... but I could do it!

Elizabeth was already in Cambridge, she'd gone to see a museum – very rock 'n' roll – so the rest of us were thinking we'd try and make it work as a three piece, which it obviously wasn't going to after the first song.

I overheard a brilliant conversation at the end of the show about whether the guy that came out of the audience to drum for you was actually a plant...
That's fantastic, we should do that! We should plant someone in the audience, and be all like, “Who wants to come and sing 'Dreaming' with us? Ladies and gentlemen... Mister Barry Manilow!”.

Allo Darlin will tonight (9th December) support The New Pornographers at their London gig at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Pick up tickets here.