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Soccer Mommy, the moniker of Tennessee's singer-songwriter Sophia Allison,
debuted under the influence of power-pop of the 1980s (think a female version of
Matthew Sweet) on
For Young Hearts (2016), that contains the first versions of
Inside Out and 3 AM at a Party, and the charming guitar line of
Switzerland,
The short eight-song album Collection (2017), that reprises two songs from the debut and adds humble catchy ditties like Death by Chocolate,
was a transitional work.
Clean (Fat Possum, 2018) continued in that vein of introspective
controlled power-pop with Cool
and the barely more energetic Skin and Scorpio Rising,
occasionally
leaning towards the languid pop ballad (Flaw).
Somewhere between War On Drugs
and Phoebe Bridgers, but a little monotonous.
Color Theory (Loma Vista, 2020), produced by Gabe Wax, insists on that rather tedious and faceless melodic rock with a number of songs that mostly sound like opener
Bloodstream and
Circle the Drain
so that the
dreamy Night Swimming and the
romantic Yellow Is the Color of Her Eyes
end up being the real attractions.
Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never)
lifted
Sometimes Forever (2022) from the monotonous lull of previous albums.
Sophie Allison keeps singing her middle-of-the-road songs
(the power-ballad With U, the power-poppy Shotgun,
the country-esque Feel It All the Time),
but
Lopatin's electronic textures make a difference in the
claustrophobic soundscape of Unholy Affliction.
And he also injects shoegaze guitars into the lament
Darkness Forever and turns Don’t Ask Me into a garage-rocker.
And so surprisingly this ranks with her first album as one of the peaks of
her career.
(Copyright © 2020 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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