To most of us, making a diary entry public for the world to read and dissect might sound like an absolutely terrifying prospect. For Soccer Mommy, the artist also known as Sophie Allison, sharing songs that are akin to private musings in her journal is nothing to lose any sleep over. She smiles when NME puts this contrast to her, looking a little nonplussed. “I might write very personal stuff; people may listen to my music and think that they know me, but the stuff I write about is vague,” she explains.
Take ‘Lost’, the first single from her recently-released fourth album ‘Evergreen’, and the record’s opener. It’s a beautifully crafted acoustic song that’s gradually layered with strings and flute, building into a chorus laden with pain and confusion: “Lost in a way that never makes sense / Lost like the things I never said / If I had another chance / I’d tell her then.” Allison doesn’t need to spell out who the song is for because the emotion is palpable – it’s about never getting the chance to say something important to a loved one and having to live with that sense of regret.
“You’re not giving away those tiny details. If you want to be open in your music, it doesn’t mean you have to be open in your life,” she explains, sitting in a windowless karaoke booth in central London. “I’m a private person. I don’t even tell my friends things. Music has always been my outlet for my emotions.”
It’s not hard for her to write from the heart and share it. “You can have this private thing that you are also happy to have people hear. I hate the idea that you can’t have both,” she says. Allison hasn’t even had to learn this duality over her decade-spanning career; it’s always been natural to her. “You can have a distance that makes it still relatable music, but it doesn’t turn your life into other people’s interest reading,” she adds.
Allison rose to stardom with her 2019 debut ‘Clean’, which was driven by angst anthems (‘Your Dog’) and heartbreaking acoustic ballads (‘Wildflowers’). Her follow-up record, 2020’s ‘Color Theory’, included her breakthrough hit ‘Circle The Drain’, a shoegaze tune about mental health struggles that breaks into a big pop chorus. Her third album, ‘Sometimes, Forever’, leaned more into rock with Johnny Marr-esque jangly guitar riffs leading tracks like ‘Feel It All The Time’ and ‘Shotgun’. On ‘Evergreen’, she’s drawn to the haunting voices of Emmylou Harris and Joni Mitchell, reflecting a more introspective shift in her music. Regardless of the genres at play, all of them pull from the different circumstances in Allison’s life at the time.
While she’s never shied away from intensely personal songwriting – her 2019 single ‘Yellow Is The Color Of Her Eyes’ is a heartbreaking reflection on her mother’s chronic illness – ‘’Evergreen’ signals a new maturity in Allison’s repertoire. She says she doesn’t want to talk explicitly about the personal circumstances behind the album, though she’s comfortable discussing loss on a conceptual level.
“There’s more to everything – you don’t have to be destroyed by everything”
It’s a way of safeguarding herself emotionally. At a time when young female artists like Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish are speaking about their need for boundaries, we ask if she’s got protective measures in place as she shares the album with the world. “By the time you start playing it live, it loses the personal attachment. It’s not yours anymore,” she reflects. “Which may sound sad, but it’s part of what makes it so wonderful playing music for people.”
‘M’, with its echoing guitars that evoke the haze of a bittersweet memory, was the first thing to take shape for this record. Despite the song’s overarching sense of grief, it also has a sense of resolve. “I don’t mind talking to empty halls,” she sings. It ends with a sweeping gesture: as psychedelic-tinged licks blend into flutes and birdsong-like whistles, it’s a little like an unfocused camera panning up to the sky and getting lost in a sea of blue.
“I wanted [‘Evergreen’] to feel cinematic, to feel big, but not overproduced,” she explains. “I love when songs have soundscapes in them. I love when you feel like you’re hearing a song, and you can feel like you’re outside or underwater. [I love those] moments where you feel like you’re right there with someone.”
At the opposite end of the tracklist, the album’s title track takes you into the woods. It’s a vulnerable, stripped-back song on which Allison chants the word “evergreen” again and again while the soft strum of her guitar chords recalls the slow sway of the stoic tree. It’s a heart-rending effect that turns the song into an immersive journey that you can fully surrender to.
“I wanted the album to feel breezy and natural. To reflect nature, a kind of calmness and peace,” she explains. It’s clear that creating the album was a way for her to heal. Though by no means an easy listen, it’s a moving and, at times, breathtaking experience. Take ‘One Sunny Day’, an eerie, echoing shoegaze track that couples despair with resolve, as Allison sings: “Now stuck in the downpour / it feels like all there is, no end coming / but I know some sunny day babe, I’ll see your face.”
There are moments of cheerful respite: lighter touches that veer away from the topic of loss. ‘Driver’ is a guitar-smashing rock song about taking the reins with someone. “It’s basically about me being a bad driver, a cute example of a way my partner co-exists with me and, in a way, betters me,” she says.
She gets bashful when pressed for further inspiration behind the song, saying it feels “goofy to go too much into it”. Still, she will say that it’s about “having someone there who isn’t going to get mad at you” for driving in the wrong direction. “They’re just like ‘Where are we going?’” she says. “It makes everything feel lighter in your life.”
“If you want to be open in your music, it doesn’t mean you have to be open in your life”
While ‘Driver’ suggests a type of control that’s thematically very different from tracks like ‘Lost’, it ties into Allison’s emotional journey – of being with someone supportive at a difficult time. “It’s really important to have stability in someone who really knows you, gets you and accepts you,” she says.
Being able to immerse herself in other worlds is also important for Allison – a “wonderful escape” that she needs “because I am so overwhelmed by the world and my own thoughts, as ridiculous as that sounds”. The 27-year-old is a keen gamer, and she’s combined that interest with her music on several occasions already. A Simlish-language version of her 2022 track ‘Shotgun’ was featured in the Sims (at the time, she said: “My life has truly come full circle”). She’s also performed for Roblox parties and created music videos based on gaming aesthetics. On ‘Evergreen’, she brings them together again on ‘Abigail’, an upbeat indie-rock track about her fictional “wife” in the video game Stardew Valley.
She confesses that the song was a result of a “straight-up lie” when she decided to just “make shit up”. The process got her out of writer’s block because she found that “there’s so much to pull from, this whole character and storyline. I had fun with that.”
It’s telling that she uses the word ‘lie’ to describe a purely imaginative song. In a way, it underscores her instinctively honest and personal approach to songwriting. “You can lie about stuff and be truthful with what you say in a way that hits harder to you. I’m perfectly fine with doing that.”
‘Evergreen’ is a record that hits hard in every sense. Her raw emotion is inescapable, whether in the hollow pain of grief, the hopefulness of love, or the escape offered by a pixelated companion. “Part of the album is being weighed down by stuff, but it’s also seeing the bigger picture. There’s more to everything,” she says. “You don’t have to be destroyed by everything.”
Soccer Mommy’s ‘Evergreen’ is out now via Loma Vista