When your kids are on the field, they need a team of support. Find a group of parents who cheer them on, ferry them back and forth, and keep up with their practice and game schedules.
Sophie Allison moved to New York City to pursue her musical ambitions and posted songs on Bandcamp under the Soccer Mommy moniker (a repurposed Twitter handle). Her debut LP, Clean, showcases her burgeoning skill with gliding melodies and expressive imperfections.
Album Review: Soccer Mommy – Sometimes Forever
Sophie Allison is the rare artist who can distil a roiling cauldron of emotions into streamlined bursts of melody, sketching vivid scenes and internal monologues with her moonbeam voice. It was central to her charm when she started recording on a four-track as a teenager, and it’s still key to the way she crafts songs for her band, Soccer Mommy.
She’s often categorized into an informal cohort of twentysomething female singer-songwriters—including Snail Mail, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus—who channel essential elements of 1990s indie-rock without ever sounding like throwbacks. But on her latest album, Sometimes Forever, Allison proves she’s a long way from the muddy DIY recordings of her early days.
This is the darkest album in her catalogue, and she isn’t afraid to tackle macro-issues like success, capitalism and anxiety. Allison’s lyrical prowess is married to ultramodern production from Oneohtrix Point Never—who’s also helmed recent projects for Rosalia, The Weeknd and Charli XCX—and together, they make it her most compelling record to date.
While her lyrics explore anxieties often rooted in childhood, it’s also a record about finding hope and healing in the darkness. The production, from Oneohtrix Point Never’s Daniel Lopatin (who has also lent his talents to Rosalia’s Motomami and the Weeknd’s Dawn FM), is unflinching in its scope, delving into goth subgenres like synth-driven gloom and industrial drones.
On a song like “Newdemo,” the modest track that opens the album, Allison’s low-fi guitar strumming turns into a glimmering psychedelic wonderland of simulated sitars and cellos. She sings about the ebb and flow of life, likening depression to an inescapable whirlpool and happiness to a firefly that always slips through her fingers.
This is a record about survival, and survival often feels impossible. It’s not easy to find joy in a world that feels broken, but Allison isn’t willing to let herself give up. The way she balances hope and fear, the light and the dark, is an essential reason why Soccer Mommy continues to be a fascinating and unique force in pop music.
Album Review: Soccer Mommy – Collection
Sophie Allison is a girl with a lot to say. She sings of toxic relationships, infatuations and the angst of navigating youth culture as a 20-something woman of colour. The Nashville native’s lyrics are both tender and scathing, a balancing act that gives Soccer Mommy a distinct sound. Despite her young age, her songs are ripe for playlists & mixes to be shared among friends & belted out during road trips.
The collection compiles Soccer Mommy’s DIY Bandcamp work and a handful of new tracks. It finds Allison in a different stage of her career, stepping into more complex arrangements and exploring more mature and resonant themes. On the album’s lead single,” Circle the Drain,” she reveals her frustrations over how women are treated in society with a vocal range that is at once delicate and scathing.
The rest of the album explores recurring themes of self-care and adolescence, with Allison in conflict with her own body and the demands of her career. The album’s strongest moments come in its more intimate moments, with Allison showcasing a softer side of herself that can be just as potent as her rage. “Sometimes, Forever” and “Feel It All the Time” are examples of this more tender side of Allison.
Allison is part of a wavelet of young women- Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski- using gentle voices, pristine melodies and expressive imperfections to probe vulnerability and trauma, self-sabotage and self-preservation. These artists, along with the likes of Hayley Williams of Paramore and Liz Phair, are continuing a longstanding role as pop’s bearers of emotional sensitivity and catharsis.
With her upcoming third album, Sometimes Forever, it’s clear that Allison has moved on from her muddy DIY recordings to something with a much grander sound. The album is a step up sonically from Color Theory, with more layers of synths and guitars that give the record an expansive sound. Allison’s pop-minded melodies still shine, but they are often augmented with subtle weirdness, a twisted chord or bent texture that makes her songwriting feel even more thorny and raw.
Album Review: Soccer Mommy – Clean
Earlier this year, Sophie Allison traded the raccoon in her ceiling for an apartment and the comforts of first-time homeownership. Her life was a blur of moving boxes, packing tape, and Lil Uzi Vert covers, and she began to compose her emotional damage into lo-fi melodies under the moniker Soccer Mommy.
Allison, who’d gained buzz the old-fashioned way—through self-released cassettes and Bandcamp recordings—now had a real studio album to make, and she chose Fat Possum Records as her home base. The label, which had released Clean, her 2018 debut, in the fall, was a perfect fit for Allison’s home-recording aesthetic and blunt emotional candour.
As she crafted her second record, Allison focused less on the pain of growing up and more on maturing into the person she wanted to be. She also refined her sound, expanding into a more expansive rock territory that made connecting with her lyrics and the feelings behind them easier.
Clean, a crisp 10-track collection that finds Allison reaching her highest creative peak, proves that she can take those same personal, intimate songs and deliver them in a larger musical setting. From the squeal of feedback that pierces through the mix at the end of Cool’ to the sumptuous keyboards in’ Wildflowers,’ the record’s meticulous craftsmanship delights in off-piste melody and uncovering fresh avenues for recognized tropes.
One song, in particular, stands out: the wrenching “Darkness Forever,” a tune written at the lowest point of Allison’s struggles. It’s a devastatingly effective performance, from the first notes of her guitar to the piercing scream she belts out in the chorus.
Despite the sonic expansion on Sometimes, Forever, Soccer Mommy remains loyal to her home-recording aesthetic. Her voice drops in the low registers, instruments are played by hand and mixed proudly muddy, and intentional studio glitches appear throughout—the sound of a demo take spliced into “Lucy” or the squeal of a feedback loop that derails the big rock buildup at the end of “Clean.” It’s a testament to the strength of this record that even with a bigger budget and a producer at the helm, this is an album that feels intimate and close to the heart.
Album Review: Soccer Mommy – Shotgun
Sophie Allison isn’t afraid to take risks with her music. After a promising debut in 2018 with Clean, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter continued to expand her dreamy indie rock visions with more ambitious collaborations on the 2020s fully formed Color Theory. Here, she pairs with Daniel Lopatin, an experimental electronic musician who makes music as Oneohtrix Point Never. The pairing seems out of left field, but it’s a smart choice. Lopatin understands the yin-yang tug of opposites, and his production helps Soccer Mommy to twist her sound into new, mangled shapes.
The album’s opener, “Bones,” begins in the same soft terrain of the singer-songwriter’s past work but gradually builds. A strummed acoustic guitar sits at the forefront, with a chorus that could easily captivate college radio, and the song’s mood shifts as it progresses. As the song builds, distorted drums and bleary Mellotron tones add weight and momentum while a tidal wave of reverb and distortion ripples across the soundscape.
Another highlight, “Fire in the Driveway,” begins with a more subdued arrangement before swelling into an abstract sonic landscape. Lopatin repurposes the sounds of nature for his aural manipulations, as droning synths and grinding bass lines create an ambient haze beneath Allison’s tidal vocals. She sings of a fleeting encounter, and her words feel tender and disorienting.
Ultimately, Shotgun is a record that explores the nebulous space between stability and tumult. It is a testament to Allison’s growth as an artist and her ability to balance different worlds with the same defiant spirit. It’s a more mature and confident album than her previous works, but it also feels more personal and vulnerable.
Recently, Soccer Mommy released a pair of remixes for the track “Shotgun.” Both come from Magdalena Bay, who reworks the record with slowed and reverbed versions that contrast anxiety and ease. The two remixes show how the album can be reworked to emphasize its themes of loss and recovery, but it also proves that sometimes the most effective changes are the ones that don’t alter the core of an original song.
Allison, who’d gained buzz the old-fashioned way—through self-released cassettes and Bandcamp recordings—now had a real studio album to make, and she chose Fat Possum Records as her home base. The label, which had released Clean, her 2018 debut, in the fall, was a perfect fit for Allison’s home-recording aesthetic and blunt emotional candor.
As she crafted her second record, Allison focused less on the pain of growing up and more on maturing into the person she wanted to be. She also refined her sound, expanding into a more expansive rock territory that made it easier to connect with her lyrics and the feelings behind them.
Clean, a crisp 10-track collection that finds Allison reaching her highest creative peak, proves that she can take those same personal, intimate songs and deliver them in a larger musical setting. From the squeal of feedback that pierces through the mix at the end of ’Cool’ to the sumptuous keyboards in ’Wildflowers,’ the record’s meticulous craftsmanship delights in off-piste melody and uncovering fresh avenues for recognized tropes.
One song in particular stands out, the wrenching “Darkness Forever,” a tune that was written at the lowest point of Allison’s personal struggles. It’s a devastatingly effective performance, from the first notes of her guitar to the piercing scream she belts out in the chorus.
Despite the sonic expansion on Sometimes, Forever, Soccer Mommy remains loyal to her home-recording aesthetic. Her voice droops in the low registers, instruments are played by hand and mixed proudly muddy, and intentional studio glitches appear throughout—the sound of a demo take spliced into “Lucy” or the squeal of a feedback loop that derails the big rock buildup at the end of “Clean.” It’s a testament to the strength of this record that even with a bigger budget and a producer at the helm, this is a album that feels intimate and close to the heart.
Album Review: Soccer Mommy – Shotgun
Sophie Allison isn’t afraid to take risks with her music. After a promising debut in 2018 with Clean, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter continued to expand her dreamy indie rock visions with more ambitious collaborations on 2020’s fully formed Color Theory. Here, she pairs with Daniel Lopatin, an experimental electronic musician who makes music as Oneohtrix Point Never. The pairing seems out of left field, but it’s ultimately a smart choice. Lopatin understands the yin-yang tug of opposites, and his production helps Soccer Mommy to twist her sound into new, mangled shapes.
The album’s opener, “Bones,” begins in the same soft terrain of the singer-songwriter’s past work but gradually builds. A strummed acoustic guitar sits at the forefront, with a chorus that could easily captivate college radio, and the song’s mood shifts as it progresses. As the song builds, distorted drums and bleary Mellotron tones add weight and momentum, while a tidal wave of reverb and distortion ripples across the soundscape.
Another highlight, “Fire in the Driveway,” begins with a more subdued arrangement before swelling into an abstract sonic landscape. Lopatin repurposes the sounds of nature for his own aural manipulations, as droning synths and grinding bass lines create an ambient haze beneath Allison’s tidal vocals. She sings of a fleeting encounter, and her words feel at once tender and disorienting.
Ultimately, Shotgun is a record that explores the nebulous space between stability and tumult. It is a testament to Allison’s growth as an artist, and her ability to balance different worlds with the same defiant spirit. It’s a more mature and confident album than her previous works, but it also feels more personal and vulnerable.
Recently, Soccer Mommy released a pair of remixes for the track “Shotgun.” Both come from Magdalena Bay, who reworks the record with slowed and reverbed versions that play with the contrast between anxiety and ease. The two remixes show how the album can be reworked to emphasize its themes of loss and recovery, but it also proves that sometimes the most effective changes are the ones that don’t alter the core of an original song.
