“Everything will fade to memory in time,” sings Sophie Allison on Changes, the emotional heart of her fourth studio album under the moniker Soccer Mommy. In the years since she began honing her bedroom pop, she has become a celebrated voice in the field of lo-fi indie pop, an ever-growing scene led by artists like boygenius, Mitski, and beabadoobee.
Her last two albums, Color Theory and Sometimes, Forever, resonated with audiences and saw Allison's dedicated fanbase swell. Re-emerging two years later with Evergreen, Allison promises her most raw, vulnerable offering to date. But at times, it focuses too strongly on sentimentality and allows personality and memorability to fall by the wayside.
Evergreen is an album that provokes waves of nostalgia, similar to that of returning to your hometown and catching glimpses of feelings you once had, but never fully recreating them. Changes is the most obvious example when Allison sings “My mother’s hair is coloured by her age/ The house is painted over, it’ll never feel the same/ And every time I come here I’m further away”. There’s no hidden meaning; Allison addresses her observations and nostalgia head-on in this track, while the ethereal Some Sunny Days is a more abstract take on the same theme of memory.
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Looming in the corner of Evergreen is a profound sense of loss and grief, never explicitly explained but emerging as a dominant theme in M when she sings, “I feel you even though you’re gone / And I don’t mind talking to empty halls”.
This commitment to capturing and sharing emotional snapshots makes for atmospheric, evocative music, but often at the cost of memorable hooks and melodies. While the experience of listening to the album is incredibly moving, there are only a few tracks that stick in the mind after the fact. Driver introduces grungier, alt-rock instrumentation that packs more of a punch without losing the overarching sense of nostalgia that defines Evergreen.
Abigail is perhaps the catchiest of the bunch, a less sombre ode to Allison’s favourite Stardew Valley character. Later, Anchor is a thrilling diversion from acoustic indie pop into a more claustrophobic dark pop that adds much-appreciated texture after the musically similar Thinking of You, Dreaming of Falling, and Salt in the Wound.
Allison is a master of emotions on her fourth album, inviting you to experience her observations and reflections first-hand. If you take a notion of getting lost in nostalgia and deep contemplation, Evergreen is a worthy accompaniment. While it lives up to the promise of being a raw, relatable, and real album, it lacks the musical innovation to make it a magnum opus.
