“I don’t know how to feel small things,” Sophie Allison, the songwriter behind Soccer Mommy, sings in “Still,” closing out her third studio album, “Sometimes, Forever.” She continues, “It’s a tidal wave or nothing at all.”
With each album, she’s expanded the ways she evokes those tidal waves. Allison, 25, started releasing Soccer Mommy’s homemade songs on Bandcamp as a teenager, layering her vocals and guitars, and she dropped out of NYU in 2017 after her dorm room recordings landed her a recording contract.
She banded and toured extensively, and on her studio albums “Clean” (2018) and “Color Theory” (2020) she confidently tapped into a legacy of guitar-driven ’90s indie rock: Liz Phair, the Breeders, the Cure, Alanis Morissette, Smashing Pumpkins. Her tunes maintained a solid, old-fashioned clarity even as her lyrics faced disorder, determinedly exposing her fears, depression, and self-destructive impulses. “I’m the problem for me, now and always,” she sang in “Royal Screw Up” on “Color Theory.”
The same struggles run through “Sometimes, Forever”, pushing to new extremes of misery and (possibly delusional) rapture. “Wherever you go, I go too/Nothing else matters when I’m with you,” Allison promises in “With U,” amid a stately wave of Beatles-esque chords that could promise good luck. But there’s a touch of masochism in her dedication: “I’ll take the pain, feel it every day / Just to make you look at me,” she sings.
Even a seemingly happy situation has an ominous undertone. “Shotgun” is the more or less poppy track of the album. The verse rides on a grungy bass line as Allison recalls “coffee and menthol on your breath” and drug problems. But she realizes, “This feels the same without the bad stuff,” leading to a chorus that switches to euphoric major chords and promises, “Whenever you want me I’ll be around.” But why is she thinking about guns?
Allison writes orderly tunes, with neatly delineated couplets and choruses. Her melodies often rise and fall symmetrically and her vocals remain sober, almost reserved. But she chose a chaos agent as her producer: Daniel Lopatin, who makes albums like Oneohtrix Point Never and composed the riveting score for “Uncut Gems.”
Lopatin knows how to weaponize vagueness. Working with Soccer Mommy, he used reverberation, distortion, synthesizer sounds and guitar feedback, at every volume level, from subliminal to overwhelming, to create backgrounds that can easily distort from lush to menacing. Allison lets him go completely in ‘Unholy Affliction’. She sings, with a sinking melody, about a compulsive, unattainable, all-consuming perfectionism: “Carve me up and let the colors run”, she offers. Behind her, the production deploys distorted basslines, bursts of drums, faint Mellotron notes, and down-tuned guitars, all pounding just below her voice and clawing at her claws.
In ‘Darkness Forever’ she confronts suicidal thoughts. “Head in the oven didn’t sound so crazy,” Allison sings, only amid echoes; then a meandering lament soars around her like a haunted castle. The music is much more cheerful in “Don’t Ask Me”, a galloping rocker with gusts of guitar sound reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine, but the best the lyrics can hope for is temporary numbness. “No more fire in my veins/My will is gone, I feel nothing,” she sings; later she admits, “I know it’s coming back.”
Throughout the album, Soccer Mommy tames despair with musicianship. The modestly titled “Newdemo” – billed as just another work in progress – is a ballad that opens with Allison singing and strumming a lo-fi guitar. She sings of impending storms and devastation, but the music rises in a gleaming psychedelic wonderland, with simulated cellos and sitar. Melancholy, warily, Allison remarks, “What is a dream but a hope you hold onto? / A lie you wish to come true.” She doesn’t expect it to stay that way, but right now she’s singing.
soccer mom
“Sometimes, forever”
(Loma Vista)
