Sophia Allison wrestles with the weight of love and grief on haunting fourth Soccer Mommy album, Evergreen
Sometime between the release of her last album, 2022’s Sometimes, Forever and now, Sophia Allison lost somebody. Naturally, the bulk of her fourth record under the name Soccer Mommy, Evergreen, is coloured by this grief. With it, she’s turning away from the sometimes kitschy, occasionally misguided experimentalism of her previous album to strip her songwriting down to its simplest components.
There’s a time and a place for stretching one’s sound and messing about with new ideas, but there’s a greater priority this time around. Sophia has things she needs to sit with.
Evergreen isn’t trying to be anything more than an emotional outlet, but it’s this lack of pretention that makes it so touching. Glowing with all of the idiosyncratic warmth the Nashville artist always brings, it’s disarming and moving almost without effort. The skeletal acoustic ballad Lost that mourns someone 'Lost in a way that don’t make sense / Lost in a way that never ends', and again on the soft yet straightforward title-track (“I miss you like a loyal dog / Waiting by the door to hear the lock turn').
Sophia’s periodical departures from her grief are equally strong – the gentle indie-rock of Driver is a perfectly pitched ode to being loved for your flaws that has just the right amount of sweet, while Abigail is a quirky tune about her virtual wife in Stardew Valley that’s sung with a straight face and is pulled off with charm.
Mostly moving at the pace of a wistful autumn stroll, Evergreen does run the risk of sounding a little one-note, but the variations in its sound, while subtle, are still present enough. There’s a dreamy touch to the slightly shoegazey Thinking Of You and later the initially staccato Anchor sees her past experimental tendencies resurface in a mélange of chunky percussion and the distant scratch of a violin, even though slightly too much tries to occur at once. The title-track arrives in time to devastatingly return us to the nexus of where this record emerged – 'She cannot fade, she is so evergreen,' Sophia resolves.
She was never out to prove anything, but aside from being a beautiful mediation on grief as an idea of love with nowhere left to go, Evergreen is a reminder of what an effective, emotive songwriter she can be.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Beebadoobee, Phoebe Bridgers, Momma
Evergreen is released on October 25 via Loma Vista
