They released four advance singles from the new Soccer Mommy record and somehow none of them was “With U,” a lovesick power ballad that’s by far the most obviously commercial song on the album. Sophie Allison manages a tricky balance here – the song goes as big and sentimental as Taylor Swift in Red mode, but her vocal delivery signals the shyness and insecurity that comes through in most of her songs. In lesser hands that might undermine the sweep of the song, but Allison commits enough that it sounds like someone who’s pushing through their reflexive defensive moves to sing something that feels enormous to them.
Soccer Mommy performs the song “Feel It All The Time” on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
I like her lyrical angle here too – she’s singing about feeling overwhelmed by the intensity of her feelings in the context of a long term relationship, expressing feelings a lot of people could easily file under “codependent.” But that’s so judgmental, really, and what she’s singing isn’t toxic or anything like that. It’s just being honest that investing that much in anyone is scary, and she doesn’t feel like she wants another option.
Soccer Mommy can’t outrun her demons on the radiant “Feel It All the Time.” The penultimate cut on her recent third album, “Sometimes, Forever”, “Feel It All the Time” is a freewheeling excursion through her darkest thoughts. “So I wanna drive out for the sunshine/Drown out the noise and the way I feel,” sings Sophie Regina Allison atop an Americana lilt – her voice striving for a brief crack of light. “But even the light is so temporary/And I see the dark at the back of my heels/I feel it all the time.”
‘Shotgun’ revolves around an intoxicating desire that’s as easy to get hooked on as the song’s choruses, and its sweet vulnerability does little to mask the destructive tendencies that underlie it. With layered production by Oneohtrix Point Never, the standout from “Sometimes, Forever” oscillates between soaring confidence and cool disaffection, as Sophie Allison recognizes the dangers of a certain kind of love but decides to take a shot at it anyway. “Uppers and my heart never meshed/ I hated coming down/ But this feels the same without the bad things,” she sings, which may sound like a case of self-deception; but take it as a whole and it’s clear that Allison is cannily making sense of the complex dynamics of new romance in physical terms, giving shape and colour to the old language of obsession.
Soccer Mommy (aka Sophie Allison) shared a new single, “newdemo.” It is the latest release from her forthcoming album, Sometimes, Forever, which will be out on June 24th via Loma Vista.
Allison elaborates on the new song in a press release: “I didn’t want to make something super depressing without any sense of magic. We played around with the space to make the song feel vast, so ‘newdemo’ had a huge transformation in the studio. It’s one of my favourites off of the record.”
Previously released singles from the album are “Shotgun,” further tracks “Unholy Affliction,” and “Bones,” also . Her most recent album, “color theory“, came out in 2020 via Loma Vista.
The Fat Angel Sings 