Soccer Mommy Steps Into The Void On Sometimes, Forever

By Grant Sharples


From the initial few moments of “With U,” cascading synth arpeggios crest a large wall of sound. It’s not a texture that you’d usually friend with Soccer Mommy, the performing/recording sobriquet that Nashville native Sophie Allison uses to create ‘90s-inspired indie rock. On amazing, guitar-forward records like 2018’s Clean and 2020’s Color Theory, Allison’s songs of heartbreak and anguish launched her to indie stardom, earning her tours with Kacey Musgraves and Paramore, a Grammy nomination, and even an iconic Bernie Sanders meme. Her work eventually caught the ears of Daniel Lopatin, who makes experimental electronic music as Oneohtrix Point Never and boasts The Weeknd’s Dawn FM and the Uncut Gems score on his resume.


“Once he was interested, I was personally pretty much like, I wanna do that,” Allison tells MTV News. “I don’t even need to hear his ideas. I trust his fashion, and I think it would really make something interesting and cool.”


Allison knows that the idea of her confessional guitar rock as honed by a shapeshifting electronic auteur sounds uncommon on paper, nevertheless it’s a teamwork that expands her idiosyncratic sound in all of the correct ways. Soccer Mommy’s third album, Sometimes, Forever (out June 24), uses her template of modulated guitars, emotive lyrics, and pop-leaning melodies and broadens it in new directions: the piercing, shrill scream on “Darkness Forever”; the thunderous drums on “Unholy Affliction”; the shoegaze inclinations on “Don’t Ask Me.”


“I want people have the ability to listen to it just for the sonic enjoyment, not to necessarily get emotional over a certain song,” Allison says. “I want it to be something that people can listen to as a whole record and have fun with it. Also, I want it to showcase new things that I can do and showcase different ideas that I haven’t really reached before.”


Sometimes, Forever reaches places that Allison hasn’t been previously, however it’s still true to the essence of Soccer Mommy. She discussed with MTV News about how she unlocked those new sounds on her record — plus working with Lopatin, how video games inspire her music, and more.


MTV News: Did you make a conscious decision to embrace new styles on this record?


Sophie Allison: It was organic. I think segment of it is just working with Dan [Lopatin] because songs like “Unholy Affliction,” “Darkness Forever,” and “Following Eyes” are a little bit darker and more eerie. Nevertheless it’s something that I’ve done before. It’s habitually been leaning a little more on the grunge end, although the songwriting I think is fairly similar at the core. I routinely have so several ideas and things I wanna try. I like so several different kinds of music, and I like exploring. I don’t wanna feel stuck doing one thing. He brought in this new element and was able to unlock some concealed potential in a lot of those songs and take them in the direction they were already heading nevertheless take them to a new level.


MTV News: What did you like about working with Lopatin?


Allison: He’s so good with arrangements. There could be songs where we’d basically record these musical group versions or stripped-back, acoustic versions. And then we’d add all this stuff around it. I remember leaving the studio as soon as we had just laid all this stuff down however not put it with each other at all. We were like, “Well, we have all of the stuff we need. We can continue to work on it from home.” He was pushing to have backing vocals on a lot of songs. I went in and did all these three-part harmonies. That was one of these things where we were like, “OK, we got them. We don’t need to EQ them and put them where they require to be right now.” Getting to hear them back subsequently is so cool and different, and he’s just really good at piecing that stuff together.


MTV News: I know you’re a big Stardew Valley and Nintendo fan. Do video games influence any of your musical directions at all?


Allison: They influence me visually a lot, which probably comes around to the music. Even a song like “Newdemo,” and especially the lift in the chorus, has this fantasy, cute, and dreamlike feeling that sort of makes me imagine stuff that I’ve seen in a Zelda game or something — this cute oasis that isn't existent in the real world. Video games to me are an escape from reality, and that escapism comes across in the new music as well.


MTV News: How do you know this album pushes you as an artist?


Allison: As soon as a record is done and it’s coming out, all I can think about is the next one and wanting to do something else. I feel like this record allowed me to explore a lot of stuff that I hadn’t totally gone into and unlock these elements that I never would have considered before because I hadn’t experimented with them. So I hope I take a lot of that into next time, not necessarily specific things from the album, although to take that new sense of imagination into the next record.


MTV News: What kinds of things did you unlock? Was it the more synthy side of things?


Allison: Not just more synthy, nevertheless even stuff like how to break up songs differently. I remember whenever we came in to do “Newdemo,” I was thinking about cutting it because I couldn’t imagine how it was going to sound and why we were going to record it. I’d just done a demo that was guitar and vocals. Naturally, we did it, plus it ended up being one of my favorites. It’s sort of just new ways of arranging things and tackling stuff like dynamics, not seeing things in such a way of like, “If we want this chorus to be bigger, then we have to add more. We have to add more guitars.” Or, “If we want this verse to be more laid-back, then we have to cut these guitars.” It opens up your brain to finding more creative ways to sculpt a song.


MTV News: From a lyrical standpoint, what are a few of the things you’re exploring on this album?


Allison: There’s a lot. It’s sort of all over the place. It’s not a super-focused lyrical album. There really are a lot of love songs, and there really are songs about feeling lost in the world or hopeless and struggling with that. There really are songs about giving in to that hopelessness and feeling a sense of chaos around you, yet you’re in your own calm. It goes around a lot with feeling hopeless and not knowing what to do with all of that.


MTV News: How do you know this record expands the sonic palette of Soccer Mommy?


Allison: I’d habitually wanted to get to do some stuff that’s a little bit more electronic, yet it’s not something I’m familiar with attempting to create. The songs lent to reaching out to those kinds of things, and there’s a certain magic that Dan brought to a lot of the songs. There’s sort of this synthy airiness that makes it dreamlike. He sets up different parts so that you go into a part, you go into a chorus, and yes it wakes you up. We attempted to disaster around with that sort of stuff that we had done a bit of before, attempting to create moments in songs, attempting to get some of that slightly warped or out-there kind of stuff, however we just took it further. Dan was the best person to push that.