***ALBUM OF THE MONTH | June 2022***
Soccer Mommy
Sometimes, Forever
Loma Vista/Concord
Listen Below
Let’s just get it out of the way: This album rules.
Sometimes, Forever, Soccer Mommy’s third full-length LP, is an unapologetic rock record with massive hooks, dynamic instrumentation, spectacular mixing, and a definable arc. It clearly announces itself as a complete work, a refreshingly clear and honest piece that knows itself, even as Sophie Allison, the storyteller at the heart, is trying to figure out who she is.
There’s been a lot of trickery in indie rock these days. I don’t have a problem with that—I like the fact that today’s alternative artists are pushing the envelopes and finding new sounds. That’s what makes them alternative. But I do still love the gumption of someone getting up with a couple of guitars, a bass, keys, and a drum kit—a band that you can clearly see in your head—and making something that blows your mind.
While nothing on Sometimes, Forever is going to go down in history as changing the face of rock & roll, the vast majority of the songs distinguish themselves through clever gestures of all sizes. Each song has its own character while the album itself maintains a central aesthetic. Daniel Lopatin, who plays piano and synthesizer, also blesses the record with crystal-clear production, which allows the interplay of the instruments to become a defining character of the album, keeping the sound far from collapsing.
The clearest manifestation of this phenomenon is in the hooks. On half a listen, “With U” is already deep inside your brain, a beautiful and uplifting chorus that mirrors the affection described in the lyrics. Similarly, “newdemo,” a song that earns its title with its lower-fi sound, breaks down spectacularly for the second chorus, dropping the percussion and draping Allison’s voice over a bed of synthesizer. It’s not a revolutionary concept, but it’s a classic example of using the right tool at the right time. This is when, on my first listen, I busted out a new Word Document and wrote the first line of this review.
Which is not to say that Sometimes, Forever is all big pop hooks. “Unholy Affliction”—arguably the closest sibling to the underwater sound that defined much of 2020’s color theory—distinguishes itself from the rest of the record by charting underexplored rhythmic and instrumental ground. It’s led by a murky electric bass, backed by a drum part that sounds like it’s met the bass part before, like maybe once in passing, but doesn’t know it super well, and the two duck and weave around each other as Allison’s always-dreamy vocals float over the top. It’s a disorienting track with an unshakable sense of forward momentum.
This quality seems to define much of the record’s lyrics. Sometimes, Forever is one of those “running to stand still” albums, where entropy is a constant but nothing seems to change. Album closer “Still,” defined by a bright, albeit slow acoustic guitar, is a coming-clean in this regard. Allison is asking to be understood as always in transit, that this results in a fear of being “not a person” (a concept alluded to on “Unholy Affliction,”), not compromising in her constant in-betweenness but also desperate for a way to connect with others. It’s the kind of album closer that is a standout track on its own, but comes into sharp and tragic focus on the tail end of the complete piece.
Sometimes, Forever is a record to treasure—a complete work that can be enjoyed on multiple levels, for the pure joy of its melodies or the murky depths of its lyrics, a real journey in sound over the course of its runtime. It cements Soccer Mommy as one of the most exciting voices in indie pop, and it’s a record I’ll be coming back to all summer long.
Notable Tracks: “newdemo” | “Still” | “Unholy Affliction” | “With U”
LISTEN: