Soccer Mommy makes getting lost feel like a new beginning. above evergreenher fourth and most moving record to date, it’s literally: “Lost” is the title of its opening track, and upon its release Sophie Allison said it was “something new. At the same time, it feels like something old. ” Her lyrics are usually pensive, coming from situations already at a loss, and the healing potential of music feels distant. But the refrain, “Lost in a way that makes no sense / Lost in a way that will never end,” doesn’t get stuck in your head easily, and the strings immediately tug at your heart, and Alison is still waiting for her. Strumming an acoustic guitar as if the next thought. Soccer Mommy’s music is never entirely inert or dark, but Alison navigates the shadows with the same sensibility that captures flickers of hope. But unlike many other artists who sell melancholic singer-songwriter music, Allison doesn’t fool so much as tease her way out. Hope must feel honest and earned. Maybe it’s there, but it’s rarely the destination. Soccer Mommy begins again, coloring the emptiness just enough to see the song through to its end.
“Loss” refers not only to the inevitability of change, but to all the realities that may pass by as a result, forcing us to live with a reality that will never come close to what we dreamed of. The first thing Alison admits she doesn’t know about this person is “what’s in her dreams,” and this is the confession that sets the stage for the album’s fundamental loneliness. For Alison, dreams are the gateway to her inner world and are the only dreams she has. Real access to her own: “I don’t mind wasting my time on lies/But everything I have to give is being taken/Because in my dreams I’m not yet free /I feel a hand around my neck/The love truth is killing me,” she confesses on the devastating “M,” with a nightmarish distorted guitar solo. Her previous work, 2022’s Oneohtrix Point Never-Produced, sometimes foreverAlison sang about losing herself in a different kind of dream. That kind of dream brought her success but made her “miss the feeling of being a human being.” A dream here is just a version of a reality that may not exist, but allows you to forget, even if temporarily or in vain, the very fact that someone will be gone.
Allison does not elaborate on the significant loss that informs so much. evergreenbut she understands that there is no end to it either. “Changes” is an acoustic ballad that she abandoned during her career. sometimes forever A heady electronics-infused record called “Sessions” depicts where she’s headed. Singing to yourself and wrestling with the sounds. idea In the midst of change, we drift into the illusion of eternity. Even if the production strays into dream-pop territory, you can feel the pain rolling in with every snare hit. For Soccer Mommy, music feels less like catharsis and more like, as Salt in Wound puts it, “pushing on a bruise.” In this song and in “Thinking of You,” being stuck in your thoughts is a mirror, the only rational response to how reality is fading into memory, and how everything is perhaps frozen in perfection. But even memory is contaminated by the fallibility of our human transformation. “All I have is dust and ashes/Caught in my hands/Slipping through my fingers until I’m empty again,” she realizes in “Dreaming.” drop down”.
Dreaming – just closing your eyes – she also suggests it’s a lot like drop down. Soccer Mommy waxes and wanes with its optimism, whether cautious or misplaced, but it also has songs. evergreen “Driver” is a grungy rocker about a love affair that takes root in its most reckless tendencies, while “Abigail” is an ode to a very different kind of romance, named after Alison’s purple-haired wife. be. stardew valley – Run the course with the warmest synth and guitar tones. But even those bright spots can’t stop the album from going downhill. “When I open my eyes again, I still feel somehow depressed,” Allison sighs. Rather, her music aims to sink into the core of that truth, even when it goes against her impulses. To that end, after experimenting with sonic dimensions on her past two albums, she reconnected with her Soccer Mommy roots and enlisted producer Ben H. Allen III to lend texture and atmosphere to her organic recordings. I did. In “Thinking of You,” she says: “Pull my skin and see what’s left.” In “M” is the revelation that dreams are more real to her than anything else. Rather than letting the song end there or fade out, the flute-led outro lets the emotion hang in the air, perhaps transporting it somewhere new.
