Soccer Mommy's Sophie Allison on channelling grief into fourth album 'Evergreen' • Interview • DIY Magazine

Listening to the opening track ‘Lost’ from Soccer Mommy’s latest album ‘Evergreen’, fans of her work will recognise the sense of startling intimacy that presided over her breakthrough 2018 album ‘Clean’. Returning to a sound that favours acoustics, it provides the platform for an exploration of loss and grief, which Sophie Allison has been dealing with in the wake of her 2022 album ‘Sometimes, Forever’.

‘Evergreen’ deals with a complex range of feelings. How can you capture the grieving process on record and translate such a contrasting period of time? For Allison, the answer lay in directness. “When I was writing these songs and demoing them, it was just me and an acoustic guitar,” she begins. “On this record it feels like there’s a lot of stuff accompanying me; we have pianos and lighter things that help the song rather than obscuring what the original picture was.”

Doing away with the more experimental and saturated feeling of ‘Sometimes, Forever’, ‘Evergreen’ is a journey of vast darkness and light in fluctuating measures. ‘Some Sunny Day’ is a hazy mirage of a song, with dream pop atmospherics conjuring images of sunshine breaking through a window that’s been shut for too long. At the other end of the spectrum is ‘Dreaming Of Falling’: a track akin to being swallowed by a void and plummeting down alongside the musician.

“Grief definitely isn’t linear. I wanted the album to have this back and forth between feeling like you’re sad and drowning in that feeling. Sometimes feeling all of this is actually beautiful and very lifting,” she says. The record suggests that there’s no right or wrong way to go through the grieving process; that it’s flexible and can affect you for the rest of your life. ‘Dreaming Of Falling’’s lyrics toil with the idea of reminiscing: “And I can feel the memory tainted by the way I’ve changed / Yeah, I could look back but it’s not the same / I see from the shadows now”. It’s something that Allison has been thinking about a lot.

“I think, with a lot of memories, they’re tainted. Looking back at this totally normal memory now has a pain to it because of someone who’s gone or there’s something missing,” she suggests. “You can move on from that in certain ways but it’s going to have a different sheen to it. Within that song it feels like being stuck between having to move forward and wanting to hold onto the past, but you can’t go back to how it ever was.”

“We don’t have things forever and it’s important to realise that’s normal and okay.”

When we look at grief from an outside perspective it can be easy to see it strictly as a negative experience and an isolated one. Allison credits her partner Julian for supporting her and says that leaning on her friends for distraction has been incredibly valuable. It also cannot be understated how much of a role positivity plays in loss. “There are so many moments in these songs where things feel like beautiful reminders and that’s what makes them painful,” she says. “It’s not all ‘everything is awful and you never want to think of someone again’. Death is normal. We don’t have things forever and it’s important to realise that’s normal and okay.”

The album closer and title track ‘Evergreen’ hits the nail on the head when it comes to this bittersweetness. Allison still clearly feels the presence of the person she lost but it’s never portrayed as a wholly terrible thing. Instead, it feels like an everlasting legacy imprinted on her that she will carry forever. It’s where the album’s balance between loss and healing reaches a critical and poignant balance.

Now entering her late-twenties, Allison has learnt a lot about herself over the last few years. When thinking about her progress as a songwriter since she first emerged as a teenager, she still recognises parts of herself in those old songs but is keenly aware of the difference. “I still feel a lot of the things I felt on my earlier stuff. [But] I had to relearn some of the songs for the last shows we did in America and some of the things I was saying I was like, ‘Wow, I would never say that now!” she notes. “A lot of the emotions still ring true but my songwriting has evolved. Now I have a deeper understanding of why I feel certain ways and when I’m lying to myself.”

Often recognised as a largely autobiographical musician, Allison notes that fictional characters give her a chance to overcome writer’s block. One of the best tracks from 2016’s ‘For Young Hearts’ was ‘Henry’: a folk-laden vignette that swooned for the imagined protagonist, who left a trail of admirers but did little to reciprocate. Having characters as a blank canvas rather than drawing from reality is something Allison notes comes more easily to her, and on ‘Evergreen’ we get a similar taste with ‘Abigail’ - an ode to her Stardew Valley character.

It feels completely standalone, as suddenly we’re catapulted into a technicolour world which wouldn’t have looked out of place on 2020’s ‘Color Theory’. An ode to escapism, we hear of Allison’s willingness to be totally devoted to Abigail in complete fantasy. “I love to escape into a world that can really hook me,” she says. “I love to escape when I have free time and just really delve into something. [Stardew Valley] is just really calming to me, talking, getting crops, completing long storyline plots and dating all the villagers; that’s everything I could want in a game.”

“My songwriting has evolved. Now I have a deeper understanding of why I feel certain ways and when I’m lying to myself.”

Just like small distractions with friends, video games and the escapism they bring can be crucial in avoiding overwhelming feelings. The last time Allison talked to DIY in 2022, she spoke of experiencing all-encompassing emotions, before quickly moving on to other ones in a state of push and pull. Since then, the process to learn more about herself has continued and she’s been working on her sense of perspective. “The mindset is really important,” she notes. “I think you have to allow yourself to feel things but also not make them worse than they have to be. Seeing both sides of things is very hard to do but it’s important not just for things like this but for everyday life.”

The period after Covid was a particularly challenging time as she found herself avoiding people after shows whilst still being active on social media. But being avoidant wasn’t solving any of her problems. “Since then, I’ve wanted to change that, I’ve been trying to face a lot more head on and that’s brought up difficulties, but also brought up places where I feel like I can do more than I thought I was able to do,” she says. “There are times where I’m proud of myself, and sometimes I’m not; it’s a tumultuous road but it feels like a road to better and better places.”

Across ‘Evergreen’, we hear the hauntings of the departed and experience Allison’s wrestling with the ever-twisting throes of change. On her fourth record, Allison’s greatest strength as a songwriter is her ability to translate the crossfire that grief brings. We’re caught between the past, present and future, looking to move on but scared of what we might lose if we do. But it ultimately feels like a homage to the legacy our most cherished friends and family have in our lives. On ‘Sometimes, Forever’, Soccer Mommy was having a hard time accepting the impermanence we can feel in life, but ‘Evergreen’ speaks to the ripples we’ll continue to have long after we’re gone.

‘Evergreen’ is out 25th October via Loma Vista.

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