Picture this: It’s nearly midnight, you put your headphones on and play Sophie Allison’s (Also known as Soccer Mommy) latest album, Sometimes, Forever, and you drown yourself in your thoughts while Sophie Allison’s melodies and lyrics seep through. Is life good when darkness is forever?
Soccer Mommy released their third album Sometimes, Forever in June under Loma Vista Recordings. Let us get this out of the way: This album is hauntingly beautiful. From the shoegaze-esque sounds, melancholic atmosphere, wonderfully written lyrics, it is a great album to cry to whilst in the dark.
This album is what happens after the moment you close your curtains from your audience. The soundtrack of a twenty-something young adult trying to navigate through the bumpy road that is the long way home after a really tough day.
The album’s lead single “Shotgun” is what I would picture myself dancing to if I were in my own world as the cool hipster girl with short hair and combat boots in an old classic coming of age movie.
The lyric “Cold Beer and Ice Cream is all we keep; the only things we really need” sums up what I think someone’s twenties are mostly like, filled with alcohol and ice cream. Depression at its finest.
Going into this album, I wasn’t expecting it to hit harder than it did. What? Was it a rollercoaster of emotions? Not really. For me at least, because it was steady, and I was somewhat – for some reason – ready; you knew you were going to tap into the long time inner angst that you have from the get go.
You know the one, the angst that you have been suppressing since the dawn of time; and that is just what I needed. Maybe it is something you need to.
It has you beyond the edge of a cliff, where you should have been falling, but you are not. For some reason, I want to describe it as music that keeps you suspended in mid air.
It keeps you from falling down the rabbit hole. Specifically, an example from that imagery, is the track “Darkness Forever” which (I think) has the narration of writer Sylvia Plath, and her demons. Hands down, my favourite track from this record.
What is great about this record is how the soundscape captures the lyrics’ phantasm. On the track “newdemo” when Sophie Allison sang the words “What is a dream but a hope you hold on to”, the instruments take you onto a ride through the clouds.
All the while it sounds dreamy, but the message of dreams being “a lie that you wish would come true” is still met, delivered by a voice that will haunt you for ages.
My personal favourite line from Sophie’s lyrics is “22 going on 23, I’m already worn down from everything” from “Feel It All The Time”. Because honestly — and no pun intended — most of us really do feel it all the time. As a twenty-something, it’s nice to not feel alone.
That’s the thing, it is a very angsty, relatable record, but the difference between this record and other angsty records is the fact that this one doesn’t feel like you’re whining and on edge, it feels like you’re floating peacefully, just getting by. Sometimes life is just like that; and sometimes is forever. That is what makes this record brilliant.
I will add tracks from this record in various late night playlists of mine. Whether I need to float in mid air drowning myself in the soundscapes or I just need a cry or someone to relate to; either way, this album is a late night jam that will surely be on repeat for the next coming weeks for me. Something you cannot pass on, definitely.
Soccer Mommy’s Sometimes, Forever is a raw guitar-driven documentation of one person’s take on a whole generation’s collective sigh.
Listen to the album below and stream it everywhere else here.
Words by Dominique Dimaano
