A Night Out with Soccer Mommy

It’s 7 PM and the air on Geary Boulevard is sprinkled with a combined smell of gasoline and weed. A rather thick mist rolled in so that the 38R we were just on has become one with the cloud that lies two stoplights down the road. Unable to find the venue, I ask a group of guys in front of us “Hey where’s The Fillmore? We’re trying to see Soccer Mommy tonight!” Out of the plethora of men, I hear the voice of a girl say “walk around the sign and go in front of the post office.” I thank them and make my way to the empty line when my friend Aaron exclaims: “uh, that was Soccer Mommy.”

Soccer Mommy at The Fillmore, by Aaron Wu

Teen angst is one hell of a unifier. Soccer Mommy took the stage at The Fillmore in San Francisco on Friday, October 29th to a crowd characterized by diversity. In the line stood a girl named Joana who traveled from Davis, a mustached man named Randy who’d been waiting for almost 5 hours, an older woman with a lip piercing and Cookie Monster blue hair clutching her prized Soccer Mommy vinyls. Amidst the crowd of indie kids with cuffed Levis and vintage flannels stood middle-aged dads, high school sophomores, and that one freshly married couple you see at every concert that is overly dressed for it all. Fitted in an all-black ruffled dress with an accompanying band of what I can only describe as “dapper dudes with suits,” Sophie Allison comes out looking determined and serious, almost as if she’s convincing herself “I’m going to kill this shit.” As I observe her barefooted drummer sip his beer, the lights go dark, a mix of yellow and blue lights illuminate the stage, and the all-so familiar guitar riff of “Bloodstream” begins. The show has begun.

Soccer Mommy at The Fillmore, by Marcella Welter

I can only describe the next 1 and a half hours along the lines of “90s kid’s bedroom daydream.” One of Allison’s strengths is her ability to evoke nostalgia through her music. It’s so beautifully “high school romance movie,” something that conjures up hints of a late-night Disney Channel feature film soundtrack in the best way possible. It makes you feel like you’ve just broken up with your significant other over the landline and now you’re on your rooftop looking at the stars. Her combination of dreary lyrics and ethereal vocals transport any listener to a time that seems wildly familiar yet so far away at the same time. It’s an addicting feeling that litters the sound waves of her critically acclaimed album Color Theory (2020). It’s one of the reasons that the crowd was as heterogeneous as it was. 

As Sophie ran through her list of hits, the crowd got louder, the distortion got wilder, and the emotions got more raw. In an almost linear fashion each song from “Bloodstream” seemed to lose tempo and band members until Sophie took the stage alone to play songs like “Night Swimming” and, the shoegaze classic, “Dagger” by Slowdive. Like the rising action in a book, these slowed songs prepared us for the climax of the whole show. After several solo performances, the band regrouped to announce their “final” song of the night which provoked some disapproval but they assured us it would be worth it because “it’s a bit of a long one.” The fact that they didn’t need to announce the name of the song tells you how hotly anticipated the next 7 minutes and 15 seconds of the night were. Conjuring up all that they could, Sophie and the band performed “Yellow Is The Color Of Her Eyes.” In the most emotive performance of the night, as if she was delivering her final hurrah, Sophie delivered a 2 minute solo of her distorting her guitar, accompanied by an even more intense banging of the drums, the type that you physically feel deep in your body. All this occurred before a crowd of weeping and tranced individuals of which I was proudly a part of. 

Even though their tour is wrapping up, Sophie Allison is not slowing down. Fresh off a collaboration with Kero Kero Bonito, she isn’t scared to test the waters while remaining true to what her sound is. “Rom Com 2004” (which was not played live and has left me very sad) is pure and unadulterated Soccer Mommy at its finest. Though the era of Color Theory is beginning to wrap up, Sophie is no longer crawling in her skin. She knows her next body of work is proving to be incredible.

As I’m writing this, it’s 1:30 AM. We’ve been waiting for an Uber outside the Fillmore for 25 minutes. Send help. Please.

Article by Joshua Jiwanmall

Photos by Marcella Welter and Aaron Wu