Allo Darlin' S/T. This record may not be self titled. I don't know anything about them. But trifles concern us little as this album is fabulous. First song has a very C is the Heavenly Option quality about it. Mainly because she sounds a bit, should you squint your tiny ears, like Amelia Fletcher or maybe it is just that she's female and he's male and this sort of call and response thing makes me lazily recall basic mileposts and really he sounds more than a bit like Calvin Johnson or perhaps at the least any Spanish indiepop singer that you might know the name of and that you would care to mention. (Hey, it turns out that singer is keyboard player in Tender Trap, the same Tender Trap who actually sound more like Aislers Set these days than Heavenly but whatever). It swings. It is a bit like the Brunettes if they knew how to swing. It's a bit like the Brunettes if Johnathan Bree wasn't such a wallflower and not so dreadfully emo. How many releases have they had? I don't know. It could be the "day after a heavy rain glee" that fills me to the brim that is clouding my judgement but even if I pretended to be objective I could ostensibly claim that there is a sense of competence and ambition to be admired in all of these songs. Why doesn't it repulse me the same as the Northern Portrait record? I don't know. It is that whole European professional indiepop band thing that doesn't do it for me. I still can't imagine Brits as Europeans. There is also the residual charm to be found in the delusions of English football fans. England's team really is pathetic. And haven't they always been? Mostly. 1966. I don't know anything about soccer. I went to high school with Alexi Lalas though. I qualify as some sort of expert in these parts then. The little girls on the pitch rolling around and writhing in pseudo-agony still irks me and it does take me 4 years to overcome that before I am again interested in futbol. It must be the hockey player genetics woven into me. Little secret, Alexi was a much better hockey player than soccer player. On our team of cheaters he was tops. He was a year ahead of me. I imagine Alexi wasn't playing Heavenly to get psychd up for those monumental LA Galaxy v. DC United tilts. He looks like a Phish fan, a Dave Matthews Band fan, like someone who has 103 different bootlegs of Dave Matthews on his Ipod. He wouldn't play The Polaroid Song then. In high school it was Guns and Roses or Skid Row. People took sides, and it was very serious. I would have chosen Echo and the Bunnymen, at the time. But now I am a farmer instead of a Llas groupie and I listen to Allo Darlin' when I am farming my tomatoes and strawberries and lettuce. All I require now is swine. I am currently borrowing an internet connection from an unsuspecting neighbour. I could repay them with Beefsteaks and Super Fantastics! Is it truly a crime to put up my antenna and passively receive an unsecured signal? How would I know that they are not in fact preternaturally benevolent souls who wish to bridge the digital divide? I am poor. Not really, but I am over the internet enough to not really need an internet connection. The age of mediocrity and the age of anonymity don't coexist naturally inside of me. But I would miss aldaily.com. There was a lovely piece which contained an interview with an editor from the New Yorker. i could use an editor. I've never had anything that I have written edited ever. I could use an editor. Next song, oh but one last note on that previous song about Polaroids first for as I've listened to both this record(scads) and the Math and Physics Club(barely), yes, the one I said that I would never let into my house, I realise they are very similar and not just because they each mention polaroid film(as an aside you can get an app on the iphone which gives all of your photos that polaroid look) but because they are essentially earnest little vignettes about everyday life and possibly it is only because English life in the city is so much more charming that American life in the city that in comparisons made Allo Darlin' crush the nerds in Math and Physics Club. But anyhow. Next song, Silver Dollars. It's marvelous. This entire record is marvellous. In my aspiration to be edited by the New Yorker from this day forward I shall adopt the pattern of the double consonant before a suffix. My other anglophilic spelling tendencies are truly Canadian affectations, a childhood watching Knowlton Nash on the National at 10PM on the CBC say lef-tenant and shed-yule. Her singing style is very conversational and warm, it isn't particularly skillful or emotive but it fits in perfectly with both the narrative and the emotional tone. Is it criminal to label bands as earnest? Some days it seems so. But whereas the Math and Physics Club earnestness is seemingly a dreary and desperate attempt to show their sincerity here it seems a mark of genuineness of the proceedings. Is there a difference between sincerity and genuineness? I should get the number of that New Yorker editor. Even after reading her interview I still can't quite get to grips with the lie, lay, lain bit, at least not until I found the three blind mice song parody. Next track. Weezer song quoting going on at the moment. they don't look like fresh faced kids, probably they are grizzled old veterans of the grueling UK indiepop circuit playing club nights for indie kids that don't dance with the likes of Alistair Fitchett and the shut-ins at Indiemp3.com in attendance. I am a shut-in. i don't mean it as any sort of denigration rather as a call to arms. Locally we have new heroes(Candy Claws) about to embark on their conquest of the world their new record is sure to be splendid but I've never invited them to play my unattended club night for indie kids that don't dance. Will it charm the same as this record? Unlikely. Candy Claws seem to be unrepentant hippies. Next track. None of my tomatoes are green as of yet. I am keen on making a tomato and cayenne pepper omelette sometime soon. This next track is about making chili. English people seem to hold food in high esteem even as the nation is almost singularly incapable of producing anything edible. I am anglophilic, remember, but I have been there three times and found that all of the quality fare is imported. Sorry, I had to go move the lawn sprinkler. My neighbour's limewire shared playlist shows up on my Itunes when I "borrow" their connection. Bone Thugs n' Harmony are ubiquitous on their playlist. Friends at work were terrifically excited to see them a couple of years back, that entire phenomenon passed me over, will indie kids five years from now sing ironically about their love of the BTH? Perhaps. but then when I was in high school Luke Skyywalker was all the rage among the sheltered kids of the suburbs and I don't recall seeing people being ironically appreciative about Luther Campbell. Next song has been playing for a bit, it's fantastic as well. The one criticism that could be leveled at them, the same that could have been leveled at any Heavenly record really, is the flatness of the emotional landscape. It's effortlessly charming but it is like when I am writing correspondence to people and at first I come off clever and fearlessly witty, but then well sometimes cleverness turns redundant, less piquant and then merely trite and you appear less than charming, familiarity breeds contempt and while Allo Darling' almost instantly declare their cleverness and charms they don't really surprise you ever in the next slate of tracks. I don't mind though. Not really. But I have low expectations. Next track, oh this is a bit peppier, but still with the standard issue jangle, the requisite Woody Allen reference. If they played here, at my next club night, they would need then visit the Sleeper house? Oh, the song is called Woody Allen. I never had a Woody Allen phase myself. I was an outcast in enemy territory, I was an athlete and a good student, but I haven't any self-esteem and so while I spent days in the orbit of Alexi and friends I spent evenings and weekends in the orbit of Morrissey and Marr and James Burke. Circumstances have not improved greatly. My best friend is a tiny black box filled with songs about Polaroids and directors I don't have any sort of affection towards. Next track, a bit of a change-up, the low resonant hum, the whispered intensity, the geography of isolation rundown in the lyrics. Lovely. For a period I had lost this connection to music. Is it the severing of the link since I have not been in a real record store for years? Technically real record stores do not exist in Denver. However, I have been in Boston and Seattle and Portland recently and there are real record stores in those cities, surely, and I felt no affinity either way. Music seems so disposable these days, certainly nothing to be fetishized over. When I go to the bookstore and occasionally stroll among the compact discs I feel numb, the stacks almost anachronistic, the idea of purchasing a CD seems almost irreducibly simplistic. i am not in any sort an audiophile and so the tinny sound invested in these mp3s that waft in among the aether and pollen doesn't cause me any mind. This is a dreamy adventure of a song, I rather like it, I could play this before a Senior League game next weekend. I realise now that I could have incorporated Math and Physics club more into this review, a comparison review, if you will, because the records are very similar. But I am lazy. She's endearing as a front person, I imagine they might be affable and delightful as an entity. I don't know how those adjectives exist except as modifiers for others. I go on dates relatively often these days and I have only discovered that I don't think I like people. Not at all. A quirky alone? If people were incarnations of pop songs it would be so much simpler, with tiny barcodes encoded on their foreheads and when they walk in a room an led display would display their affections and if Allo Darlin' showed up on the display I would run to the door convinced that they possessed all of the most lovable attributes whereas if Cathal Coughlan or Widespread Panic appeared I would run in the other direction. I used to revel inside when someone at work would call me weird but now that seems only to be a synonym for loneliness. Last song, slow dreamy number, almost country. They've a great country record in them surely. There is an earthiness that would translate wonderfully with steel guitar and Dr Pepper. There is the closeness in this song that pervades the entire album, as if they are in a room playing an intimate show just for you, very Lucksmiths in that way. The male voice reappears, not as successfully as on the first song, he's got an awkward, goofy tone, doesn't work on a "serious" song. Not especially since she started off the proceedings so brilliantly. It works alright in duet. But as producer I would have surgically excised his vocals when he was out trainspotting or playing footy or whatever it is that english indiepop bands do when they are not recording charming pop records.

Update: Looks like Pitchfork already cited C is the Heavenly option. My apologies, I am no Scott Mcinnis, really!