Soccer Mommy ’Sometimes, Forever’ – Review

A common complaint is that Soccer Mommy’s albums have lacked intensity and variety; Tempos, melodies and production details all felt too similar and the effect was that songs felt interchangeable. On third album ‘Sometimes, Forever’ Sophie Allison has worked with experimental electronic producer (and recent Weeknd collaborator) Oneothrix Point Never in what might be an attempt to rectify that issue. The results are immediately obvious. This is an album enlivened by textural variety. Something like ‘Newdemo’, which on ‘Colour Theory’ might have been treated like any number of other introspective guitar ballads, is here transformed into something that shape shifts and surprises. The guitar never settles on a particular tone, it subtly bends  and twists underneath Allison’s beautiful melody. On the album cover Allison blurs in the camera’s lens. Psychedelic pink swirls project over her. OPN has had a similar effect on her music, distorting and stretching songs like ‘Newdemo’ to make unusual patterns. He disrupts the monotony that Alison’s songwriting is still inclined towards, and creates the feeling of songs that are separate as much as they are joined. 

Like its two predecessors, ‘Sometimes, Forever’ pays homage to the less celebrated elements of 90s Alt-Rock. Alison has dropped anchor in that particular spot and explores all there is to see, this time incorporating the same melancholic minor chords that Thom Yorke turned to during that mid-90s melancholia. Like Radiohead, Soccer Mommy dip their toes in electronica, trip hop and dub without getting soaked. Soccer Mommy have also become something of a missing link between the emo revival and contemporary indie rock. It’s not hard to see why. Alison is not afraid to be emotive – as she puts it on ‘Still’, ‘I don’t know how to feel things small, it’s a tidal wave or nothing at all’ – but her insights are artfully evasive. She rarely arrives at conclusions, either narrative or emotional, preferring to let feelings cloud over, and questions lie unanswered. On the aforementioned ‘Still’ she drives to a bridge to end her life and ultimately just stares and contemplates. It ends with her saying ‘I don’t know how I’ll feel tonight’ and you suspect that’s almost certainly true. 

Alison doesn’t have a particularly light touch as a writer; the complexity of the verses are offset by clunky but effective choruses. And some of these choruses are huge. ‘Shotgun’ and ‘Bones’ in particular are more memorable and sticky than anything Soccer Mommy have produced to date. These are hooky alt-rock songs where the guitars shimmer and the baselines bounce. The band have taken to playing Slowdove covers live and its possble to hear their influence, and that of shoegaze more generally, on the likes of ‘Feel it All the Time’ and ‘Don’t Ask Me’.

Some of the old criticisms are still relevant – at this point it’s apparent that aesthetic rejuvenations won’t fundamentally fix the embedded holes in Alison’s songwriting. Her melodies can still feel stiff and repetitive (perhaps that is a consequence of her limited vocal range) and she still leans a little hard on cliches (‘your crystal eyes cut deep like a knife’). And then there is the sense that the further out she pushes the boat, the less assured she becomes. The weaker songs are definitely the ones that lean heaviest into more experimental modes; whether it’s the trip hop vibes of ‘Darkness Forever’ or the Industrial soundscape of ‘Unholy Affliction.’  Concerningly for future growth, the most affecting songs on ‘Sometimes, Forever are also the most straightforward.

One day that might have repercussions but for now ‘Sometimes, Forever’ gives you exactly what you would want from a moderately successful indie act moving closer towards the mainstream. It’s ambitious without losing a sense of intimacy; sharp and dynamic but grounded in deep emotion. It’s ‘Soccer Mommy’s weirdest album but also their most immediately gratifying. Soccer Mommy may utilise the sounds of 90s buzz bin bands but their trajectory is taking them firmly to top billing.

8/10

Review Roundup

Bartees Strange ‘From Farm to Table’

There is a sense in which an artist like Bartees Strange could not have existed a decade ago. Everything about ‘From Farm to Table’, his sophomore album, is very post-pandemic, post-BLM, post-genre, post-EVERYTHING. Here Strange melts sounds and ideas together with such frequency that it would feel exhausting in a lesser artist’s hands. As it is ‘From Farm to Table’ is remarkably composed and cohesive. And his success is mainly testament to an assured symbiosis between hip hop and indie rock; the former’s cultural relevancy and ambition counteracting the latter’s self-limiting affectations. ‘From Farm to Table’ doesn’t have a ceiling and it doesn’t really have many precedents. ‘Wretched’ may begin as an introspective emo number but by the end it’s exploded into a four to the floor banger. ‘Mullholland Drive’ takes a similarly unexpected trajectory, ending with a horn fanfare and anthemic refrain. These are the album’s strongest moments, where Bartees Strange marries audacious musicality with sincere heart on sleeve emoting. The album’s back half is surprisingly muted in comparison, ending with a series of more traditional acoustic ballads. When the focus falls so squarely on Strange’s voice and storytelling, as on ‘Tours’ and ‘Black Gold’, limitations start to become apparent. Better are the songs where Bartees Strange explores and exploits the tension between genres; using this as a lens to examine wider tensions in society. In those moments Bartees Strange doesn’t just sound inventive, he sounds necessary.

7.5/10

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Foals ‘Life is Yours’

Foals broke through in 2007, during the summer of Nu-Rave, and while they weren’t necessarily the ones waving the Glo-sticks they were certainly scene adjacent. Afterall, ‘Cassius’ and ‘Baloons’ sounded great soundtracking house parties on Skins. Now, 15 years later, Foals are making good on that nascent promise and making what is ostensibly a fully fledged Party album. Reacting to lockdown, ‘Life is Yours’ is a refreshing change of pace for Foals after a couple of bloated, boring rock records. But it’s not a successful change. Foals still sound lifeless; a sense that is only amplified by the use of superficial dance signifiers and electro pop textures. Songs like 2021’ and ‘2am’ are bloodless; they look longingly at the dancefloor but lack urgency and conviction. No DJ in his right mind would spin any of these tracks. The production is immaculate to a fault but tepid grooves and Balearic beats are easy calories in this context. ‘Life is Yours’ is yet another bland album from a band who are capable of so much more.

4/10

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Camp Trash ‘The Long Way, the Slow Way’

Over the past decade, emo has arguably been the most fertile form of guitar based music. It’s given us a riot of vibrant sounds that have influenced artists at the extremes of bedroom-pop (Dltzk, PinkPantheress, Hey ILY!) and the mainstream (Olivia Rodrigo, Willow). But recently the genre has gone a little stagnant. It’s not that the current generation of bands aren’t there – they are – it’s more that they haven’t particularly pushed things forward. This year’s best emo records – by Little Green House, Prince Daddy and the Hyenna, Carly Cosgrove – have mainly served to remind me of older, better albums. So it is with Camp Trash’s highly anticipated debut ‘The Long Way, the Slow Way’, which just feels too predictable. I mean, like many classic emo records before it there’s a building on the cover and everything (one of the many nods to emo culture you will find spread across the record). Despite the abundance of well crafted, competently structured songs, Camp Cope have made an album that strains and fails to find great hooks, let alone innovative, fresh ideas. There are fine songs here: ‘Let It Ride’, ‘Weird Florida’ and ‘Riley’ stand out. Mainly though, ‘The Long Way, The Slow Way’ just makes me think about how underrated Oso Oso’s landmark ‘Basking in the Glow’ actually was if it’s still inspiring knock offs like this half a decade down the line.

6/10

Bloc Party ’Alpha Games’ – Review

During the late 00s indie rock revival, Bloc Party were always slightly ahead of the curve. ‘A Weekend in the City’, their 2007 sophomore album, was an ambitious fusion of Indie Rock and Hip Hop forms; it explored burgeoning sexuality from a young, black man’s perspective. Notwithstanding its quality, these facts alone would have made it catnip for critics in 2022. In 2007 it was underrated. Their adventurous streak continued on 2008’s mostly successful dance fusion ‘Intimacy’ which has since become a minor landmark of the nu-rave era. More recently, the band have experimented with grunge and gospel, albeit with less success. There is something admirably contrarian, if a little perverse, about the way they’ve defied expectations, even if thats meant frequently playing against their own strengths. Whether it’s trading in the best indie rock drummer in the country for a drum machine, or swapping angular riffs for House swells, they have always done their best to go against type. But on new album ‘Alpha Games’ they return to the atmospheric indie rock sound that made their debut, ‘Silent Alarm’ so compelling to begin with. 

And at first ‘Alpha Games’ does seem to be something of a return to form. A couple of minutes into ‘Day Drinker’, the engaging opener, the duel guitars start a conversation, and it’s thrilling. ‘Traps’ keeps the momentum going with more frantic guitar interplay and lyrics about ‘contact highs’. And in truth that’s how ‘Alpha Games’ feels. Initially at least. There is that instant, kinetic buzz that comes from catching up with an old friend at a school reunion. Things just seem to fall effortlessly into place. Here you’re briefly reminded of how technically accomplished and emotionally vulnerable the likes of ‘Helicopter’ and ‘Positive Tension’ were. That’s a combination few bands are ever able to pull off. There is a lot of that same feeling in ‘Alpha Game’s opening one two punch. 

But like that high school reunion where you end up nostalgically rehashing old antidotes or awkwardly fumbling through small talk, eventually that high fizzles away. At least, that’s the direction Bloc Party go in here. When they’re not pulling old shapes, they’re casually striking new, mild mannered, poses that don’t convince. This is a low stakes album that ultimately feels a far cry from the sky-scraping ambition of the band’s early releases. 

If the vision is there, then the execution is often botched. The grating vocal infections of ‘In Situ’ are awkward. The bizzare spoken word number, ‘The Peace Offering’ ends the record on an atmospheric note but it‘s lifeless and laboured. ‘The Girls Are Fighting’ feels bizarrely vaudeville; it has the kind of mood setting exposition that you’d expect to find in a production of Oliver or something. ‘Sex Magik’ is only marginally less embarrassing than the title might suggest. But only marginally. Like ‘The Girls are Fighting’ it has a slight theatricality but also introduces cringe inducing elements; lyrics like ‘between her legs, divinity’ and ‘in her presence I’m made to kneel.’ In its depiction of adolescent lust, it invokes the still stinging ‘I Still Remember’ from ‘A Weekend in the City’ a song that also walked a tightrope of earnest candour yet never stumbled.

‘You know I’m on fire when you cum!’ That’s not a lyric from ‘Sex Magik’, of course, but the memorable refrain of ‘Banquet’, one of the defining singles of the mid 00s indie rock revival. So Bloc Party have always been capable of cringe; they just tempered it with so much energy and conviction and audacity that it became part of their multifaceted charm. But now, reduced of their original, breathtaking rhythm section, the band are no longer capable of pulling off the same technical tricks. They are against the ropes like an aging boxer or flagging like a marathon runner that sprinted out the blocks. There is still stuff here to recommend: ‘Day Drinker’ and ‘Traps’ are exciting, ‘Of Things Yet to Come’ is moving – but this is Bloc Party’s least convincing album to date. You could admire ’Four’ and ’Hymns’ as experiments they couldn’t quite pull off but it’s easier to see the discolouration, and harder to forgive the failures, now that they have stopped trying to be another band and are back trying to be Bloc Party.

5.5/10

June ’22

What i’ve been listening to in June: