Soccer Mommy’s Sophie Allison plays with ‘darkness and fun’
NEW YORK » How songs come to Sophie Allison is pretty simple. They just sort of show up, raw and in need of attention.
“The way I write is I just sit down and — I could be watching TV, be having coffee or something — I’m just kind of mindlessly playing guitar until I stumble upon an idea I like,” the singer-songwriter said.
She stumbled on a lot during the pandemic judging from “Sometimes, Forever,” her band Soccer Mommy’s third album. It’s a wonderfully varied mix, from the industrial harshness of “Unholy Affliction” to the eerie “Following Eyes” to the airy “With U.”
As the title suggests, “Sometimes, Forever,” is a push-and-pull of light and dark, happiness and sadness, both jumping from song to song but also within songs.
“I really wanted this sense of contrast, obviously, because so many of the songs have contrasting themes and contrasting sounds and ideas,” she says from her home in Nashville, Tenn.
She leaned into ’80s goth pop, like The Cure, The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
“I wanted a lot of the album to have that ability to play with both darkness and fun,” she said.
Soccer Mommy first hit the indie scene in 2018 with “Clean” before making its Billboard 200 debut with the follow-up, 2020’s “color theory,” which led to a slot at Glastonbury and a late-night TV debut on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Allison is considered one of Gen Z’s brightest voices, one who allows her fellow musicians to experiment.
“She almost has like a director’s mindset,” said Rodrigo Avendano, who is credited on the new album with playing synth, acoustic 12-string, electric bass, electric guitar and lyra.
“She gives people their space and autonomy. But she knows when something feels right and she knows when something needs work. She knows what she wants and she knows when she has no idea what she wants. So that’s a really inspiring type of songwriter to work with.”
In addition to Allison and Avendano, the band includes Julian Powell on guitar and Daniel Lopatin on piano and synths. The album also features Rollum Haas on drums and Graeme Goetz on bass.
“Sometimes, Forever” was produced by avant-garde producer Lopatin, who helped shape The Weeknd’s “Dawn FM” and Charli XCX’s “Crash.” Allison, 25, said she quickly warmed to Lopatin.
“I do not like relinquishing control over to people; it scares me,” she admitted. “I’m a big-picture person, so I need someone who can come in and know the big picture, but then take charge in getting us there because otherwise I’ll get lost and distracted.”
Lopatin was encouraged to “get weird” and gave Soccer Mommy a layered, darksynth gloom.
“It was just instantly sounding great,” she said. “And I was like, ‘OK, I can relax.’ ”
Allison mixes the personal and the professional every day. She lives with Powell, Soccer Mommy’s chief guitarist. Two of the songs on the new album — “With U” and “Shotgun” — are specifically dedicated to Powell.
But Allison being Allison, they’re complex songs, exploring dependence and need.