Soccer Mommy is overcoming her harshest critic

It’s been an interesting year for 26-year-old musician Sophie Allison, better known by her stage name Soccer Mommy. She's freshly back from touring alongside Brooklyn-formed alt-rockers The National, which took her across the US, UK and Ireland. Since dropping her third album Sometimes, Forever last year, following 2020’s Color Theory and her 2018 debut Clean, it’s been a seemingly quiet time for the down-to-earth indie artist. Her latest EP Karaoke Night was a low-pressure project, focused on harnessing the greats while having fun. Covering the likes of shoegaze heroes Slowdive and Pavement alongside pop and country icons Taylor Swift and Sheryl Crow, plus R.E.M for good measure, the EP has the Soccer Mommy grunge thread weaving through, creating a body of work that neatly echoes her own Nineties-influenced sound.

“The tour was good, but exhausting. There were a lot of long drives,” Allison admits smiling, clearly happy to be back at the home she shares with her long-term partner and bandmate Julian Powell. “The guys in the band are all super helpful. I had never really crossed paths with The National until day one of the support shows. It’s incredible to watch them play live.”

“When I was in high school, I was really into their self-titled album,” the songwriter adds, nodding to the group’s 2001 record. “I was really into ‘I Need My Girl’. Seeing that played in front of me was really cool. They literally dropped another project between the two tours Soccer Mommy did with them this year – it’s scary!” Allison laughs. “They record music on the road.”

Aside from The National, Soccer Mommy boasts quite the impressive Sonic CV, having toured with a host of icons from Mitski, Kacey Musgraves, and Slowdive, to Jay Som, Frankie Cosmos, and Phoebe Bridgers, even opening for Paramore and Vampire Weekend.

“We haven’t had an experience where anyone is unfriendly, but you’re on opposite schedules, you don’t tend to see the headliner much on tour,” Allison admits when asked about life on the road. “You’re working when they’re not, and vice versa. I didn’t do many fun activities during the recent National stint. We were in the van constantly. There’s a place in Glasgow that I really like to go to called Mother India. It’s usually just going out for a nice meal. We saw Dublin, which was lovely.”

While trekking across the UK and Ireland in a van, Soccer Mommy released a brand new EP of covers, shrouded in the bandleader’s magnetic vocals and dreamy melancholy. Reworking hit songs of the last three decades, its tracklist features Taylor Swift throwback “I’m Only Me When I’m With You”, Sheryl Crow’s anthemic “Soak Up The Sun”, the brooding “Dagger” by Slowdive, classic Pavement track “Here” alongside R.E.M’s “Losing My Religion”.

“The only one I was alive for was the Taylor Swift song, which came out in 2009,” Allison observes with a laugh. “I was probably 11 at that point, when the first album was released. I remember my dad gave me his iPod with the record downloaded onto it, because he thought it was cool. It was a big deal. For the world of middle schoolers, especially. I was a very hardcore tomboy, but I gave up pretending I wasn’t a fan when I was about 15, after the pre-teen years.”

Caught in the warmth of nostalgia, she smiles, “I still have that CD in my truck. That whole album is made up of catchy songs. It inspired me a lot as a child, seeing a young girl playing guitar, writing songs, singing pop. It was amazingly earnest and personal. That stuck with me. It was the dream, in my child mind, to write albums. We recorded our last LP between the A and B rooms of the Nashville Sound Emporium, same as Taylor Swift, but not on purpose. They have a platinum version of that first record hanging up. Seeing a plaque doesn’t infuse pressure, it’s more just a crazy feeling that we could make something awesome.”

Continuing to open up about her writing process, Allison continues: “when I’m writing or recording a record, none of the thoughts of it being scrutinised really comes in until it's done and on the way out,” she shares. “I can’t see past the finish line to that period until the work is finished. I also don’t co-write at all. I have nothing against it for other people, I just can’t. It feels like such a weird invasion in a really awkward way.”

Notably, there’s plenty of ties between The National and Taylor Swift, including collaborations "The Alcott" and "coney island" in recent years. Aaron Dessner also shares a long-standing friendship with the pop sensation, starting long before he contributed to Folklore, Evermore and Midnights (3am Edition), raising the question: did Soccer Mommy ever meet Swift while touring with the group?

“I have met her, but not through my career,” Allison laughs. “It was back when she opened a learning centre at the Nashville Country Hall of Fame. I went to an arts high school so they got music kids from my school to come and take a photo op with her. That is my one meeting with Taylor Swift. She used to live here though, and a lot of people used to see her around.”

On what might drive Sophie Allison herself away from the industry, she’s frank in her response. “It’s no wonder certain artists end up choosing more privacy in their lives when they can go viral that easily. I don’t think I would ever leave music as a choice, [but] to be honest, I already live that private life. I hang out with about three people and don’t like to do crazy stuff.”

Turning back to her latest EP, Karaoke Night is inventive and woozy in its indie-rock roots, crafting a batch of songs that wouldn’t feel out of place on Sometimes, Forever. Like Lucy Dacus covering Springsteen or Phoebe Bridgers’ take on Elliott Smith, capturing the magic of others in her own style appears to come easily to Allison.

“There’s two ways to approach it,” she offers, matter of fact. “Sheryl Crow is in a world close to what I do or have done before. I can’t make it a carbon copy of her song. She’s better than me, why would you ever listen to a copy of me singing this? The most important thing when you’re doing a cover is that it has to feel like you. I’m not a theatrical, trained singer. I’m not just going to do a perfect, stunning rendition. I want it to come from inside.”

It’s a straightforward answer, but suited to an artist who has taken care to ensure her career plays out very much on her own terms. On the subject of covers, hearing renditions of Soccer Mommy tracks must be surreal even now, I suggest.

“Honestly, I don’t really watch those videos,” Allison replies, “not that I’m against it. Things can be taken so many different ways. For a while, ‘Your Dog’ was getting covered a lot, but the meaning other people read from it was always so different from what I felt!” she grins. “But it completely worked for that scenario. It doesn’t bother me. There’s nothing wrong with taking material and putting a new outlook on it. There’s definitely songs I don’t want anyone to cover again, because it’s been done so many times! I also think it’s really weird when people cover Kate Bush. She has such a strong, specific identity that can’t be repeated.”

On last year’s acclaimed album, Sometimes, Forever, Allison joined forces with Oneohtrix Point Never’s Daniel Lopatin. While his production style usually draws from the electronic, his ability to expand on Allison’s ‘90s grunge palette helped create a hauntingly beautiful body of work. Has her day-to-day life changed since the LP was released?

“In a lot of ways it hasn’t, but in a lot of ways it has,” the singer shrugs, after a pause. “Touring when you don’t have a fresh album out is less hectic. I got two kittens. That’s been a big happiness boost for me. They’re called Spike, inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Musa, from The Winx Club books. They’re from the same litter. One is long hair and the other is short hair, but they have the same black and white markings. Being with them has brought so much value to my life - it’s like I had a child! They’re all over my Instagram page.”

Turning to social media, the musician’s attitude towards seeing images of herself is relatively unorthodox in the current music industry. “Getting off social media was the greatest thing I could have done in terms of my relationship with fans,” she affirms candidly. “That sounds really counterintuitive, but when you meet people in real life, the experience is often really pleasant. I can’t remember the last time I had an actual bad time, except if someone was being a little strange or taking too long. The part that can start to make you feel really alienated is sitting on Instagram and interacting with a stranger. I’m just not that type of person. If I’m not on social media, I speak to maybe five people on a daily basis. I just don’t have any desire to be any other way.”

“It gives you such a negative view of what fans are thinking or what they want from you,” she emphasises. “When you’re only seeing them in person, it’s great. But flooding yourself with strangers is too much. It’s been really good since I stopped trying to be present on social media. Now, when I go on and post a photo, I don’t check comments or messages. They can know a bit about me but I’m not going to start a relationship,” she shrugs. “Social media isn’t a real world. You could go your whole life without ever seeing these people. It can be a way to connect, but why kill yourself trying to be who people want you to be or give people content? In the physical world, that’s not even there. You’re just at your house.”

Soccer Mommy’s unabashed but laidback candour is part of what endears her, a trait that’s continued into her songwriting. Admittedly, the thing she struggles with the most is being photographed and the anxiety of waiting afterwards. “That’s the bad part: feeling like you need to get ahead of every photo that comes out of you,” Allison confesses, noting the journey it’s taken her on. “Now I know that I can just live my life without ever thinking of the photos that are coming out. It takes time to get to that point, but now I never think about it. I don’t need control anymore. I don’t need this visual presence with the world. It’s not what I want to do with my life. You’re always your harshest critic."