Three Imaginary Girls

Seattle's Indie-Pop Press – Music Reviews, Film Reviews, and Big Fun

This morning I woke up to the news that another one of my favorite bands has decided to stop making music together (full excerpt of the note below). Allo Darlin have realized that life and geography sometimes gets in the way of making perfect indie-pop songs (which is completely understandable). Their last show will be December 11, 2016 in London (if you go, please share videos!!!).

Clicking around the Allo Darlin bandcamp page proves that their last eight years have been well-spent. They leave us with a beautiful catalog of songs, videos, and memories that will forever be near and dear to our heart.

TIG had the honor of helping present all of their Seattle shows (of which I wish there were so many more) and the only thing more wonderful than their brilliant songs are their kind and hilarious hearts. The members of Allo Darlin are as sweet as you would hope they’d be – which I think is the best legacy of all. And, as you can tell from the top photo, they also have great taste in t-shirts.

Hugs and best wishes to one of my favorites of all time and forever.

Here are three of my favorite things Allo Darlin have done (btw – narrowing it down to three is pretty impossible).

 

 


After eight years of playing, laughing, driving, dancing, singing and generally having the time of our lives, we are calling it a day. We will be playing our last show at the Scala in London, December 11th 2016.

Wait, don’t be sad! Although we are generally a reflective and nostalgic bunch, this is not an overwhelmingly sad decision or twist of fate for us. Most bands have to stop actively recording and playing shows at some point, especially those like us who don’t have this as our day job.

As some of you may know, we now live in two different countries, and these days have enough children to at least field a five-a-side football team. Many years ago we took the decision that our friendship was more important to us than our ”career ”as a band. This meant that we didn’t tour relentlessly and didn’t let the music business get in the way of what brought us together in the first place: the joy of music and the thrill of playing with people you were lucky enough to call your friends.

It is hard to find the words to describe exactly how much fun it has been to be in Allo Darlin’, and what a privilege it has been to make records and play shows from Brisbane to Bern, Boston to Bristol. We feel extremely fortunate that we came along at a time where it was possible for a DIY bunch like us to make records and play shows without an enormous advertising budget  or a proven business plan. We were incredibly lucky that the Field of Dreams approach seemed to work, but not without the help  of some wonderful people, most of all Sean from Fortuna POP!, and in later years Mike from Slumberland. We had so much wonderful support from others in the indiepop community, like John Jervis from WIAWYA, Tom from Fika, Camilla from Weepop, Indietracks, and New York Popfest to mention but a few of the many.

Lots of people help to get records out and heard and they don’t always get recognition, so we’d like to thank Lucy Hurst and Daniel Gill for working so hard for getting press coverage for us, and Olli Dutton for helping us get on the radio in the UK. Other people we’d like to thank are Craig at Cargo, Jim and Nicole at Ground Control, and Joe at Angular Publishing. We would especially like to thank our soundman Al Harle, who taught us how to be a bit more pro when we were touring and generously gave his time when he could have been paid a lot more money by somebody more successful. We’re sorry we never got to be big Al!  We’d also like to thank Simon Trought and Giles Barrett, who were always so helpful and fun to record with, and helped us find our sound.

Of course, none of this would have happened without the support and love from you guys, the audience, who came to our shows and bought our records, gave us your floors to sleep on and helped to set up shows. Your generosity and feedback was always inspiring and appreciated! Please keep on supporting the bands you love, telling them they played a good show and buying their records. You will probably never know how much this means to them.

We hope to see as many of you as possible at the Scala, and thank you so much for giving us the time of our lives.

Elizabeth, Bill, Paul and Mike