Soccer Mommy – Evergreen
As nuanced as it is captivating, Sophie Allison’s fourth album as Soccer Mommy is a still photograph of loss, heartache, and the hope in between
Where Soccer Mommy’s previous album Sometimes, Forever was up in space with its ethereality, Evergreen is firmly set on Earth. Written after Sophie Allison suffered a great personal loss, her fourth album is a tender reflection on continuing to live with a broken heart.
Evergreen is raw and real – a still-frame photograph of someone at the forefront of personal turmoil. Allison, forever gifted in transposing the personal into poetics, is at her most candid, bearing her skin to expose the bruises. Opener Lost sets the pensive tone, her silk-soft vocals yearning for meaning and closure; ‘Lost in a way that doesn’t make sense, lost in a way that never ends’. The gut punches hit like a boxer’s quick-fire combinations – M examines absence and emptiness; Changes, the fading of memories; and Thinking of You, of getting lost in a recollection.
Yet the subtle beauty amongst the record's melancholy exists through its peaking rays of hope – like Some Sunny Day’s dream for a distant reunion, or the escapism of Abigail, dedicated to Allison's wife in Stardew Valley. Allison paints a full emotional landscape of this chapter of her life that’s as complexly nuanced as it is brilliantly captivating.
Listen to: Lost, Abigail, Thinking of You