Written by: David Williams
Score: 8.6/10
“I think to have a single mind approach to love does not touch you because it’s not relatable and deep. There are so many different layers that are part of what makes it so beautiful to connect with someone.” Sophie Allison aka Soccer Mommy tells NPR. The songwriting maturity on her new LP Sometimes, Forever is on full display throughout the forty-two-minute runtime. Since Allison’s ascend to indie prominence with her 2017 breakout, band-cap recording compilation Collection, Allison has displayed an exciting propensity to craft compelling stories about love from an intimate perspective. While this songwriting prowess was clear throughout her next two projects Clean and color theory, Sometimes, Forever is on another level—displaying a clear growth in her songwriting through a stunning ability to paint vivid images through her lyrics that cover a vast array of different emotions springing from relationships and love.
The twenty-five-year-old from Nashville, Tennessee sings with the wisdom of someone well into their thirty’s on Sometimes, Forever. There are tracks that are open and honest records of self-reflection on how love can be intertwined with pain at the same time. In her previous critically acclaimed album color theory, she touched on similar themes, but now Sophie has dived into the deep end of the pool feet first tackling an extremely difficult question, “maybe I am the problem in relationships?”
Photo Credit: Sophie Hur
Sometimes, Forever is Sophie’s most experimental and sonically dissonant album she has attempted in her young career. Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never fame is the producer on the entire record. “I wanted him to bring this energy of taking these songs to make it feel otherworldly,” she says to NPR about Dan’s production. He is able to spruce up what would have been a standard alternative rock track to something that can be apocalyptic with his use of synth layers or making her vocals subtly washy.
The album starts with “Bones” a familiar-sounding song that one would expect with Soccer Mommy incorporating dreamy guitar riffs with an infectious melody in the chorus. The lyrics cut like a machete through warm butter “I’m trying to be someone/That you could love and understand” and then following it up with self-realizing that “I’m not” repeating the phrase over and over hoping maybe if she says the words enough the thing she most fears won’t be true.
Photo Credit: Sophie Hur
“With U” starts with synths that make you feel you are traveling through time and space headed straight for the moon. This is a love song about complete loyalty to a partner and taking their pain from them by being present in their time of need. With airy vocals layered over the guitar chords, the song’s theme creates a touching moment on the album.
Sophie veers into one of her most experimental songs yet “Unholy Affliction” with synths equipped with shadowy sounds and a haunting chorus. Her vocals on the song are ghostly that could be used in a horror movie soundtrack. With industrialist cyborg-like lyrics “I’m barely a person/Mechanically working” she sounds like her spiritual being is that of the tin man searching for a heart trying to be whole again.
The debut single of Sometimes, Forever “Shotgun” has dark reverb guitar riffs as well as dreamy ones throughout. Sonically contrasting the light and blackness of the thoughts inside someone’s head. She has poignant loaded lyrics in the chorus “And whenever you want me I’ll be around/I’m a bullet in a shotgun waiting to sound.” The record is comfort food for fans of Soccer Mommy stylistically and lyrically.
The darkest thematic song on the album is “Darkness Forever” which is a stripped-down song with vintage 80s synths that sounds like something from a John Carpenter movie layered into the back end of the record. The lyrics touch upon serious topics about mental illness “My brain is burning, hot to the touch” and how treatment for said mental illness might be worse than the actual disease itself “Lithium readings/Making me dizzy.”
The song “Don’t Ask Me” gives the listeners tons of energy with the glitzy guitar riffs. Sophie sings about someone who is checked out and mentally beaten down in the first verse but by the time we get to the third one she sings about finding comfort in who she is as a person. The record sonically could have been plucked out in the mid-90s with the chord progression. With the appearance of the song, it would be difficult to not imagine the listeners wearing a vintage rock shirt with tattered jeans when listening.
The last three out of four songs are at a slower tempo meant for Sophie’s songwriting to shine as bright as a shooting star. “Fire in the Driveway” is an acoustic ballad with the narrator being open and honest about knowing that they should leave a relationship, but don’t have the courage to pull the trigger on ending it because it would rip their partner to shreds leaving no one left to pick up the pieces.
Photo Credit: Sophie Hur
“Following Eyes” sonically has both ends of the light and dark spectrum joined together at the hip to make for a song that is addicting. The lyrics are supernatural in nature singing about spiders, ghosts, and witches. This is a record that should be on everyone’s Halloween playlist this year and if it’s not there is something wrong with you.
In “Feel It All The Time” Sophie returns to her Tennessee roots with a country-inspired song. With intimate-sounding vocals paired with the stringy guitars, you can picture the record being played on a jukebox at a bar in the movie Road House or in a Ford F-150 commercial.
The final song on the album “Still” is a stripped-down acoustic guitar ballad that closes out the LP with washed lyrics talking touching on the theme of not knowing how to fix one’s life and being impulsive while also adding terrifying words of “I’ll cut a piece out of my thigh.” Closing out the record with one of her most touching confidential tracks so far.
Sophie Allison is the pure definition of an artist that always wants to push herself into territories unknown while also maintaining an aesthetic that is consistent with who she is as a person. In every aspect imaginable, everything about Soccer Mommy’s latest LP is more grandiose and larger in scale but also contains her most personal lyrics making Sometimes, Forever her best work to date.