Nashville's Soccer Mommy creates 'Evergreen' piece of art on masterful fourth album

Soccer Mommy does her best thinking as she drives down the scenic, tree-lined backroads of Nashville in her Toyota Venza with the windows down. And once she thinks enough, she writes a song.

After a year and a half of thinking, writing and recording, Soccer Mommy's fourth studio album, "Evergreen," arrives on Friday. The 27-year-old singer-songwriter, born Sophia Regina Allison, pours her heart out on her latest indie rock record, a project that helped her process a profound personal loss.

The album captures Allison's grieving process and acceptance of change through 11 tracks that are equally suited for the Bluebird Cafe and the Brooklyn Bowl.

"Evergreen" is a morose yet hopeful, eloquent, lyric-forward alternative rock record that showcases Allison's siren-like voice in simple melodies.

And once you press play, it's impossible to not listen to "Evergreen" in full.

Soccer Mommy processes loss in music: 'In a moment, suddenly everything is different'

Allison began writing the new record in October 2022 in Nashville and while she was out on tour and recording her record "Sometimes, Forever."

"It felt like I was writing music again like when I was putting it on Bandcamp when I was younger," Allison said. "It kind of felt like that same energy of just writing it for myself and not having huge aspirations for production ... wanting it to feel more like the song's at the heart of everything."

Compared to her last album, Allison says she thinks the songs on "Evergreen" feel more intimate. The lyrics and the rhythm guitar remain at the center of the songs, and everything else falls around it — that's what she wanted.

Listeners can feel her more angsty inspirations, Sleater-Kinney and Sonic Youth, laced into the fabrics of the tunes, but as she wrote, she also listened to the works of songstresses Joni Mitchell and Emmylou Harris.

She was inspired by the "the kind of lifting, light feeling that (their songs) can have."

"It's about the lyrics and the music, but I think it's less about trying to build this, like, crazy world."

Instead of creating an outlandish universe through her production, Allison channels her raw, real-world feelings into the songs.

"There was this loss in my life, and so much of writing this album was working through that and just trying to balance all the different feelings," she said. "It's not even just about loss, honestly. It's about change and how I think when something huge happens in your life, in a moment, suddenly everything is different and you can't go back to what you had before."

The loss catapults you into a new chapter of life without choice, she said. "It's like a sudden cut off of the current space you're in and it's hard to adjust."

On the album, Allison muses on being launched into the future and constantly seeing reminders of someone from the past. It's about "trying to find your way through that a little bit into some kind of clarity."

It was writing music that led her to this lucidity. And as she wrote, she discovered that reminders of those you've lost can be painful, but also bittersweet.

"It doesn't have to be torturous at every moment," she said.

Soccer Mommy writes about driving roads of Nashville

The tracks on "Evergreen" successfully tap into that bittersweetness, ranging from sentimental and sunny to melancholy and ruminating. With the assistance of Atlanta producer Ben H. Allen III, the album's use of real flute and strings builds sultry musical vignettes.

Soccer Mommy starts the album with "Lost," even though it's the last song she wrote for the record.

The reflective track is a gentler side of Soccer Mommy, sewn together with emotive strings and Allison's soft voice: "I’ve got a way / Of keeping her with me where I go / But how she feels I’ll never know / It’s lost to me."

The next track, "M," sees a similar sound, as do many other songs on the record. Think more Lucy Dacus, The Japanese House and Samia than grunge acts that usually draw comparison to Soccer Mommy, like Bully and Blondeshell.

But don't worry — that kind of dissonant, punk-adjacent sound comes in on tracks "Some Sunny Day" and definitely in the song "Anchor."

Alongside Jefferson Airplane-like guitar licks and pulsing percussion, Allison desperately sings: "And all the things I never said  / Are ringing in my head again / I tried to write them down / But those are letters that could never find their end."

While most of the tracks on "Evergreen" center around the idea of memory and loss, some meditate on the open road, like the songs "Driver," "Thinking of You," "Dreaming of Falling," and "Salt in Wound."

The roads of Nashville are where Allison does a lot of reflecting, she said.

"There's a lot of little references in these songs, not to necessarily to specific places in Nashville, but to personally driving around and having a moment (and) it reminding me of something or feeling like freedom," she said. "Having the windows down, just all these kind of things that I think come with living in a smaller city where you can drive."

Allison recalls one tree-lined road in Brentwood by the train tracks as her favorite thoroughfare. "(Driving) is just quiet time — it's like a very pensive time."

She knows the Nashville streets well. Allison's family moved to Music City when she was about a year old. She attended Nashville School of the Arts and left briefly to spend two years at New York University after high school.

When her music career skyrocketed, she dropped out, started touring and moved back to Nashville.

"I probably would have kept living in New York if I hadn't started touring," she said. But she missed spending time outside, the laid back atmosphere of Nashville and her great friends.

"I think there's just something about here that's very peaceful and familiar," she said.

Allison's family still lives in town, and she praised the "bustling scene" here for all kinds of music, adding that it is actually kind of "peaceful" that indie rock isn't the most highly represented genre in Nashville.

But there's still great music from the genre coming out of the city — Allison nodded to Nashville artists Bully, Juniper Jefferies, and her bandmate Julian Powell.

And Allison isn't going anywhere for now, she said. Nashville is home.

She'll keep driving down these same familiar byways, like she sings in the new song "Thinking of You": "I comb my hair, I hang my clothes ... I drive my car down the same roads / And I’m thinking of you."

Why Soccer Mommy named her new album 'Evergreen'

After 10 impressive tracks, Allison ends her new album with the song "Evergreen," which was not her original plan.

Strings and simple guitar run under a silky, haunting melody. "Two years gone by and I’m still pondering it all," she sings. "And in the light of day, I’m haunted by it all / She cannot fade she is so evergreen, evergreen, evergreen."

Allison's label was interested in ending the record with the song, an idea that eventually grew on her. As opposed to her original plan of ending on "Lost," Allison said she loves concluding the album with this track as a final thought.

"Ending on 'Evergreen,' there's still that pain and that sadness and discomfort, but it does have this lifting feeling at the choruses," she said. "In the song, it kind of uses 'Evergreen' as this nickname for a person. It has this connotation of something being full of life and everlasting. With loss, that's kind of an interesting idea.

"Just because something's lost doesn't mean it's gone from your memory and from your heart."

Soccer Mommy's 2025 tour kicks off at the end of January. You can catch her Nashville show at the Brooklyn Bowl on March 15. To learn more about Soccer Mommy, head to soccermommyband.com.

Audrey Gibbs is a music journalist for The Tennessean. You can reach her at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville artist Soccer Mommy releases fourth album 'Evergreen'