Sophie Allison – affectionately known as Soccer Mommy – has never been interested in indie-rock orthodoxy.
Anchored by raw, heartfelt lyricism, her music has drifted from shoegaze fuzz and warped dream-pop to glitchy electronica and industrial grit. Now, her fifth album, Evergreen, strips everything back to a hushed, folky minimalism. Ahead of her Forum debut on 13 June, Allison delves into the unexpected return to her roots.
Raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Allison started writing songs on guitar at six years old. But it wasn’t until 2015, the summer before a short stint at New York University, that the teenager uploaded her first set of lo-fi bedroom pop demos to Bandcamp. Soccer Mommy quickly captivated listeners with catchy, plaintive melodies and candid verses, distinguishing her from singer-songwriter contemporaries.
Soccer Mommy at RISING
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A period of profound loss
Over the past decade, Allison has evolved with finesse, consistently gravitating toward different corners of sound. “It’s just me being chaotic and not being able to stick to one thing,” she says. “I find that with every album I make, afterwards I want to shift in a different direction and find something new that’s exciting to me.”
Emerging from a period of profound personal loss, Evergreen is a dramatic shift from the experimental, horror-tinged tones of 2022’s Sometimes, Forever. The mostly acoustic album sees Allison at her most intimate, echoing the unvarnished honesty of her early recordings.
“I wanted to write music that was a little bit more straightforward and confessional,” she says. “And I think the songwriting always leads you to what the production’s going to be.”
A staunch advocate for physical copies, each track began as a demo on Allison’s beloved four-track cassette recorder, capturing live takes. “It felt like I was 18 again,” she recalls. “Just sitting in my house making really simple versions of songs, where I didn’t have this big, grand idea of all this crazy stuff I was going to try.”
Evergreen became a vehicle to ground herself as she navigated the complexities of grief. Her reckoning with life’s “inescapable impermanence” captures moments of insanity, numbness, anger and joy, before leaving listeners with a flicker of hope. ”In the light of day/ I’m haunted by it all/ she cannot fade/ she is so evergreen,” Allison sings on the closing title track.
Nuances of these emotions are honoured even in production, where subdued arrangements leave each sentiment uncrowded. This delicate approach came in collaboration with producer Ben H. Allen, known for his work with Deerhunter and Animal Collective.
Together, they replaced Soccer Mommy’s synthesised layers with soft flutes and swirling strings for something “more organic” and “unexpected”. One of the album’s defining features is its use of earthly ambient sounds– something Allison has always loved.
“It pulls you into the moment of a song,” she enthuses.
“Makes you feel like you’re in a certain space, experiencing this thing… It adds an aura.”
On tracks like Lost, she uses an effects pedal to manipulate her voice, turning whistles and hums into bird calls, crashing waves and rustling leaves.
“I wanted [the album] to feel like you’re laying outside,” she explains. “Eyes closed, the sun is on you, and you can feel the warmth and flowers and trees.”
While Soccer Mommy’s lyrics often read like diary entries – introspective and painfully relatable – Allison is careful to separate emotional truth from any personal exposure.
“Songwriting is something I’ve been doing my whole life, ” she says. “It’s a way for me to process my thoughts, my feelings, worries and anxieties. But even when you make confessional music, there’s a way to write where you’re saying things that cut right to the bone for you personally, but it’s also still vague.”
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It’s a distinction that feels particularly relevant in a culture where the lines between artist and audience have become increasingly blurred, with more artists addressing the emotional toll of parasocial relationships. With an incisive pen, Allison shares just enough to welcome connection without surrendering too much.
“The songs still hold really specific things that are a bit of a secret for myself,” she smiles. “It’s really nice to know that something you’ve made means something to people – that they’re hearing you and understand and have similar experiences. But when I’m writing, I’m never thinking about anyone but myself. That might sound selfish, but I’m only thinking about whatever I need to make and what I like.”
This delicate tension — between the deeply personal and quietly communal— is what makes Soccer Mommy so enchanting. Each song serves as a private talisman, but also an invitation: come sit under the branches, listen to the birds and perhaps find something of yourself in the shade.
Soccer Mommy is playing The Forum on 13 June as part of RISING. For more information, head here.
Beat is an official media partner of RISING.
