Sophie Allison is obviously a very smart girl. I say, girl, since at the time Collection, her first official album is out, she’s yet to turn 20, and I say smart, because judging by her intelligent and melodic songs, I guess she’s carefully watching things around her and has chosen the name “Soccer Mommy” for her moniker, probably hoping that this will not be her only permanent calling. Sophie has been around for a few years, coming up with her bedroom pop songs, and becoming one of those “Bandcamp” success stories, some calling her a female version of Mac DeMarco.
But judging by the album, which represents a brief set of re-recorded songs she already came up with, the comparisons can only rely on the fact that as DeMarco, she reached a ‘regular’ label through tried and trusted indie sources and the spirit of the ‘bedroom pop’ or lo-fi pop” (or whatever you want to call it) with only a song here and there resembling something of DeMarco’s music (“Benadryl Dreams”).
In less than thirty minutes Allison (as in the title of the opening song) shows that she gathered fans not because of her age or a specific music style, but because she’s got a beautiful sense of melody, a voice to match and a sharp lyrical sense that makes all of the eight songs on Collections a joy to listen to. While she breaks no new musical grounds, it all sounds perfectly in sync, as a cool glass of lemonade would taste when there is a perfect balance of lemon and sugar in it.
It is her lyrics though, that give her song that extra touch that pushes them into that ‘special’ category, like in the “3 AM at a Party”, one of the personal favourites here, she says: "You deserve better than the ones you want / You deserve better, yet you’ll never see / You deserve better from someone like me”. Even for those that are a bit closer to middle age than Sophie Allison is, she’s able to present what it is being somewhere on the edge of being a ‘pure adult’ or anywhere between Nashville (where she’s from) and New York (where she studies).
Whatever the case is, and whatever these songs sounded in their previous form, on Collection Soccer Mommy came up with a young and fresh music, as that old worn phrase would say, ‘for all ages’.
