Nashville-native, Sophia Allison, better known by Soccer Mommy, took the stage at Newport on Friday, September 28th. Allison got her start at New York University, where she majored in music business, but after playing her first performance as Soccer Mommy, she was signed by the record company Fat Possum and soon dropped out of school to return to Nashville. Since then, she has released four albums and toured alongside artists like Vampire Weekend, Paramore, Phoebe Bridgers, and Wilco—skyrocketing her name into the musical zeitgeist.
Soccer Mommy has previously been to Columbus, performing in 2022 in the Athenaeum. This time, she had amassed quite a crowd for her 2024 album “Evergreen.” I arrived at the show around 9:20, walking in during her song “Abigail,” meaning I missed her opener, the band Dummy, and her two first songs “circle the drain” and “The Driver.” Despite my late arrival, I was able to find a spot towards the back left, only about ten rows back from Soccer Mommy. She was accompanied onstage by a four piece band, and the mixing in the venue projected the instrumentation, but Soccer Mommy’s vocals cut through like a knife in warm butter. Although I am not the world’s biggest Soccer Mommy fan, I was thoroughly impressed by her voice, sounding exactly like her recorded tracks, but still obviously singing live.
The demographic at the show was not who I expected; I was prepared to be surrounded by an army of indie girls in their late teens, but was instead shocked to be in a majority male crowd. Soccer Mommy attracted the female manipulators of Columbus, with a plethora of mustaches and wired headphones galore. A vast majority of the crowd was not of college age, but of people in their 30s. This, unfortunately, took the energy of the room down on top of an already more relaxed set. I found myself growing antsy as the set went on, for her songs are difficult to dance to, especially when surrounded by white cis-men.
As for Soccer Mommy herself, my personal highlights from her set were “abigail” and “Your Dog.” Soccer Mommy’s song “abigail” is not about a real woman, but about a fictional character in the videogame Stardew Valley. In my own life, I play Stardew Valley, and the character I always choose to marry is none other than Abigail. Soccer Mommy makes references to the character’s attributes throughout the song, singing “I’m drowning in your purple hair” and “I know all your favorite things, chocolate cake and shooter games.” Although Soccer Mommy has genuine love for Abigail, she knows that Abigail is made up, yet “still, I cling to every word,” of her programmed responses. The song culminates into a beautiful metaphor about loving someone who is not mentally present, complete with purple lights during the live performance for Abigail’s hair. “Your Dog” stood out to me sonically, for it is on the grungier side of her discography, featuring a guitar rift that repeats throughout the piece. Personally, I am a fan of her older, bubblegrunge music, so the few songs she played from her 2018 album “Clean” were the biggest hits and most fun live.
Prior to the show, I was looking forward to “lucy” and “crawling in my skin,” but I was disappointed to hear her skip over those two for more mellow songs from her recent album “Evergreen.” I cannot fault her for playing the majority of this album at her show, for this is the tour for the album, but I selfishly was holding out hope for older songs. She ended her set with “Scorpio Rising,” a mellow song from her first album that satisfied the audience.
The Soccer Mommy crowd was then dumped out of Newport and onto High Street, right in front of Midway bar, a hilarious juxtaposition of the event we just attended. As I watched the freshman enter the overstimulating bar, I laughed to myself at the idea of a Soccer Mommy song playing at such an establishment, a true testament to the diversity of lives at Ohio State.
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