Photo of Sophie Allison, a.k.a. Soccer Mommy, by Anna Pollack
w/ Hana Vu | 8:00pm | 6133 Delmar Blvd. | All ages | $30 advance, $35 day of show
Sophie Allison may perform all of her music under the nom de rock Soccer Mommy, but unlike many singer-songwriters masquerading under a band name to sell more t-shirts, her music has a scope and size that feels like it’s calling for more than just a single person’s name attached to it.
Not that that was always the case: Allison started recording as Soccer Mommy when she was still a teenager, recording demos in her Nashville bedroom and uploading them to Bandcamp. Her first two official albums—2018’s Clean and 2020’s Color Theory—expanded her sound, but it was on Sometimes, Forever that she really leveled up, creating one of the very best albums of 2022—number 7, to be exact. On that release, she teamed up with producer Daniel “Oneohtrix Point Never” Lopatin, who beefed-up the production values with thicker, heavier instrumentation and fuller arrangements—check out the malevolently romantic single “Shotgun” and its waves of shoegazey guitars.
On her latest, Evergreen, though, Allison and new producer Ben H. Allen have dialed things back a bit, making the album(released last October on Loma Vista) a more intimate affair more akin to Allison’s earlier work, albeit with modern, crystal clean recording rather than the lo-fi bedroom aesthetic of those earliest Soccer Mommy albums. It’s a sound suitable to an album filled with songs about grief and loss, as exemplified by the album’s bookends “Lost” and “Evergreen.” But it’s not all doom and gloom: Allison said she wanted Evergreen to “to feel like you’re laying outside, eyes closed, the sun is on you, and you can feel the warmth & flowers & trees,” a task she accomplishes with aplomb on the floating, dreamy “Some Sunny Day” and the Cure-meets-Juliana Hatfield love song “Abigail.” The guitars don’t always stay dialed down, either: the album’s big single “Driver” has every bit as much crunch as Sometimes, Forever‘s finest moments. That said, as proof that the crunch isn’t there in lieu of songcraft, check out her recent stripped-down performance of “Driver” on Jimmy Kimmel Live that dials the song back to acoustic guitars, synths, and cellos but loses none of its power.
The end result: she’s once again made my (long-overdue-but-still-coming-I-swear) top 10 albums of the year list for 2024, this time all the way up at number 5. That said, I’ve never had the privilege of seeing Allison live, though she’s made St. Louis a frequent tour stop with previous visits to Off Broadway on her earliest tours and The Pageant and Delmar Hall on more recent stops. If that Jimmy Kimmel performance linked above is any indication, we’re in for a treat. | Jason Green
For more information or to purchase tickets, click here.
Soccer Mommy on tour:
03.10.25 – Denver, CO – Ogden Theatre %
03.12.25 – Kansas City, MO – The Truman %
03.13.25 – Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue %
03.14.25 – St. Louis, MO – Delmar Hall %
03.15.25 – Nashville, TN – Brooklyn Bowl %
04.26.25 – Lisbon, PT – Lisboa ao Vivo $
04.27.25 – Madrid, ES – Sala Copernico $
04.28.25 – Barcelona, ES – Sala Apolo 2 $
04.30.25 – Zurich, CH – Papiersaal $
05.01.25 – Fribourg, CH – Fri-Son $
05.02.25 – Milan, IT – Legend $
05.03.25 – Munich, DE – Ampere $
05.04.25 – Cologne, DE – Artheater $
05.06.25 – Brighton, UK – Chalk $
05.07.25 – Bristol, UK – SWX $
05.08.25 – London, UK – Hackney Church $
05.09.25 – Leeds, UK – Project House $
05.11.25 – Dublin, IE – Vicar Street $
05.13.25 – Glasgow, UK – SWG3 TV Studio $
05.14.25 – Manchester, UK – New Century Hall $
05.16.25 – Paris, FR – Le Trabendo $
05.17.25 – Amsterdam, NL – London Calling Festival
05.18.25 – Brussels, BE – Les Nuits Botanique
05.20.25 – Hamburg, DE – Nochtspeicher $
05.21.25 – Berlin, DE – Lido $
05.22.25 – Warszawa, PL – Klub Hybrydy $
% support from Hana Vu
$ support from Bored at My Grandma’s House
