Soccer Mommy

In the organizer's words:

Sophie Allison has always written openly about her life, making Soccer Mommy one of the most interesting and popular indie rock artists of the last decade. Allison has used the songs of Soccer Mommy as a vehicle to process the thoughts and encounters that inevitably come with the reality of growing up. After all, Soccer Mommy began as an exercise in teenage Allison putting her plaintive songs on Bandcamp as demos. Over the years, however, she's perfected that sound, using the endless production possibilities now at her disposal to transcend singer-songwriter clichés. The albums began with the true core of songwriting, and she then imagined all the unexpected forms they could take. Each Soccer Mommy album felt like a surprise.

On Soccer Mommy's fourth album, the tender but determined Evergreen, Allison writes about her life again. But that life is different today: since her last album Sometimes, Forever from 2022, Allison has experienced a profound and very personal loss. This has resulted in new songs that reflect her feelings relentlessly and sometimes even humorously. (Speaking of funny, this is a Soccer Mommy album, so there's also an ode to Allison's purple-haired wife from the game Stardew Valley). Once again, these songs were Allison's way of navigating life and grounding herself. She wanted them to sound and feel as real as possible - raw and relatable, unvarnished and honest - like the demos. The songwriting should again set the direction in which the production should go. Nothing superfluous, everything genuine.

Evergreen is the captivating result. An 11-track album full of emotion that feels like Allison is driving you through the streets of her hometown of Nashville as she plays songs she recorded to document those very dark days. Without the experimental production of Sometimes, Forever, Evergreen mirrors the earlier self-produced work, but gives it a sense of cinematic grandeur. Opener "Lost" is a beautiful acoustic piece, a tortured thesis that breaks through even the most oppressive clouds. There's the haze and sway of "Some Sunny Day", where the promise of a reunion is the only relief for the vertigo of loss. Over the muted strumming of "Dreaming of Falling", she conjures up momentary glimpses of madness - horror, sunlight burning the skin, everyday experiences beginning to frame the black hole of eternity. "Half of my life is behind me," she sings, while the chords billow like low-hanging clouds, "and the other has changed somehow."

Price information:

VVK: 25€ plus fees