Watching the Breakfast Club Starring Allo Darlin'

Remembering the innocence of youth can often more be pleasant than the original experience of actually being young and naïve. That’s why looking at old photographs can be more fun than what the experience of what one was really doing when the picture was snapped. This act serves as a metaphor for the sweet, sweet music of Allo Darlin’. They grab hold of the dulcet sentiments of life with a youthful exuberance while at the same time wryly capture the wisdom of someone who is older than that now looking back—but without the cynicism that pervades so much of pop these days. Their “Polaroid Song” works as a meta-commentary as it explicitly refers to an out of date technology used to ensnare the present, complete with what their Australian antecedents the Go-Betweens called “that striped sunlight sound”—full of jangly guitars, bouncy rhythms, and a general happiness. Director Jun keung Cheung’s video provides the song with a movie soundtrack—specifically referencing John Hughes’ Breakfast Club in a Be Kind Rewind manner. It’s goofy, in the best possible way, like the way the characters in the movie were. It fits the song in a fun way, and the song itself bears repeated listening in the way one watches old movies that are close to the heart.