I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SOCCER MOMMY-“Wildflowers” NPR’S SOUTH X LULLABY (March 26, 2018).

I was supposed to see Soccer Mommy open for Phoebe Bridgers.  But I got sick on the way to the show and missed the whole thing.  Boo!  Since then I’ve been hearing more and more about Soccer Mommy.

This song, “Wildflowers” reminds me a lot of folkie alt songs from the 1990s.  There’s something about the kind of slackerish delivery of her vocals.

Our South X Lullaby with Soccer Mommy took us … to my favorite store in all of Austin, Texas: Uncommon Objects, a self-described “one-of-a-kind emporium of transcendent junk” or “your eccentric uncle’s attic on steroids.”

The song from the Switzerland-born, Nashville-raised artist’s album Clean which was released earlier this month is, as I hear it, about finding your place in the world — to discover who you are and to blossom.

“Wildflowers don’t grow in the city
I dreamt the sidewalk broke in two
The earth was calling to me”

There are 24 different antique sellers under the single, Uncommon Objects roof, and for Sophie Allison, aka Soccer Mommy, we found the perfect setting for her song “Wildflowers.” It was, in fact, filled with objects related to blooming flowers.

[READ: January 9, 2018] “The Year of the Frog”

This story was by turns confusing, infuriating, too long and then really interesting.

It begins with the narrator, a young girl, describing their horse, Sweet Macho.  The horse was a former racehorse who carried himself with ceremony.  Their mother’s boyfriend, known inexplicably as The Frog, is delighted.  Horses?  Why didn’t you say you had horses?  The narrator chuckles because the other animal, Gert, isn’t really a horse, she’s a Shetland Pony.

They had a real father but all they knew about him was “he’d been a son of a bitch, he’d worked in the fields and he’d once screamed like a woman when a bee got in the house.”

Their mother was an excellent horsewoman.  However, she had no time for the horses because she took care of three rich widows–she kept their gloomy houses clean.  Thus, neither creature had been ridden in years.  When he asks to ride, she says forget it Sweet Macho would throw you in a second.

Okay maybe he was known as The Frog because of his wide-set eyes and gangly limbs.  He wasn’t bothered by being ugly or being called ugly.  He was cheerful and confident.  He would come into their lives for a few days and they return to his wife in Albuquerque (no children).  He spoke of her very fondly.

The Frog never stayed long and this bothered the children because he “made their chests constrict with an almost unbearable joy.”

Eventually The Frog climbed up on Sweet Macho and within a minute he was unmoving on the ground.

He awoke and was confused asking over and over where he was and what had happened.  And this begins the tedious portion of the story.  The Frog has amnesia and he keeps asking over and over where he is and what things are.  The children are in disbelief at this and so we see them asking about everything–does he know this or this or this.  They eventually start lying to him because he forgets things right away anyhow.  He was there for an entire season.  He didn’t work, he didn’t really move, just sat around and was waited on.  Then he started to feel better and took up jogging.

I was afraid it was just going to go on like this, but like this reader, the kids’ mother was fed up  and said “Cut the crap, Dave.”  He responded, “Who the heck is Dave?”

And that’s when the kids’ mother threw Dave out of the house.  The kids were apoplectic.  The narrator’s brother shouted “I hate you!  You take every single good thing from my life.”

There’s a strange epilogue tacked on, but it’s not all that satisfying. There were moments that I really enjoyed in this story but overall it was mostly annoying.