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Archive for the ‘Soccer Mommy’ Category

Soccer Mommy: XPoNential Music Festival: River Stage (Wiggins Park, Philadelphia PA, September 20, 2025)

Posted in Philadelphia, PA, River Stage, Soccer Mommy, Wiggins Park, WXPN 88.5 FM--Philadelphia, PA, XPN Fest, Xponential Music Festival on September 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: September 20, 2025] Soccer Mommy

I saw Soccer Mommy in 2021 and again earlier this year in January.  I didn’t need to see her again, but I was really excited that she was on the bill and I was excited for my wife to see her as well because they previous show was great.  And the weather was perfect for this set.

It’s a standard set up: Sophie Allison (who is Soccer Mommy) plays guitar and sings.  She has a fantastic four piece behind her–Rollum Haas: drums, Nick Widener: bass, Julian Powell: guitar and Rodrigo Avendano: guitar/keys.  The band is really good and they bring these songs to life live in a more powerful way than on the album.

The setlist varied a bit from January but in a shorter set she played all of  the hits.  And there is something really fun about being outside on a gorgeous day with a great musician playing songs just fifteen feet away from you.

She opened with Circle the Drain (every time I’ve seen her I’ve been surprised that she leads off with her hits).  And she followed it with Driver, which is on of my favorite songs of the year.  I love how heavy the verses were and then how soft the chorus was.  It sounded great live.

She told us that her song Abigail is about the character of Abigail in Stardew Valley. My wife loves Stardew and was quite tickled to hear that that’s what the song was about (she didn’t know the song).  It’s a slower song which Sophie said she wrote when she was having some writer’s block. But it proved to be a delightful song. (more…)

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Soccer Mommy (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, January 25, 2025)

Posted in L'Rain, Philadelphia, PA, Soccer Mommy, Union Transfer on January 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: January 25, 2025] Soccer Mommy

I saw Soccer Mommy back in 2021 and was surprised that it sold out.  And this show, four years later, also sold out.

After seeing her last time I knew what was to expect.  The only bad part was that I didn’t know her new album that well.

Sophie Allison (who is Soccer Mommy) plays guitar and sings.  She has a standard four piece behind her–Rollum Haas: drums, Nick Widener: bass, Julian Powell: guitar and Rodrigo Avendano: guitar/keys.

As I said last time, the band is really good and they bring these songs to life live in a more powerful way than on the album.

The thing that most surprised me last time and surprised me this time is that she played her big hits pretty early in the set.  Last time, Circle the Drain was her big single and she played it second!  Well, she played it second this time as well.

And her song Driver, which is one of my favorite songs of 2024 she played third!  It sounded amazing–her voice is fantastic live.

Then after playing one more new song she played the other big song that she had out recently, Shotgun.  So that was the three biggest songs I know by her all done within the first five songs.

After that she played a bunch of songs from the new album. I didn’t know them very well, but they sounded great.  However, the show slowed down quite a bit during these songs as each one was more chill than the previous.

At some point Eagles fans started a chant (there are Eagles fans at Soccer Mommy shows?)  Sophie asked what that was all about and then said I don’t really care about football, which led to a huge cheer.  (more…)

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L’Rain (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, January 25, 2025) [SOCCER MOMMY]

Posted in L'Rain, Philadelphia, PA, Soccer Mommy, Union Transfer on January 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: January 25, 2025] L’Rain

I saw L’Rain open for Animal Collective without knowing anything about them.  I was blown away.. I really liked the

extended jams that were full of everything–wild, weird guitars, drums that went from simple and gentle to thrash-worthy, and a saxophone that didn’t sound anything like a saxophone.   And Cheek’s voice.  Which she sampled in various ways, pitch shifting it, looping it on top of itself and creating an astonishing array of sounds.

But this show was a littkle different.

She started out with her first song (that comes from a soundtrack) and it was pretty quiet.  Cheek manipulated her voice and much, but it was mostly atmospheric.

The second song featured her on guitar playing an interesting rotating melody.  But it was also pretty quiet.  The keyboardist played some swirling saxophone solos.  I feel like both songs pushed the 6 minute mark.

The band took up about half of the stage and I was right in front of the drummer (no names were given).  During some of the songs, he went crazy, playing loud and fast while the rest of the band jammed and improvised.  He was my favorite player tonight.

The previous time, I was mesmerized by their guitarist because he was doing all kinds of interesting things [strange chords, or non-chords, making squeaking feedbacking sounds] but I didn’t really feel like he did that tonight.

Knead Bee and Uncertainty Principle showed that L’Rain largely plays an R&B base to her songs.  The songs were pretty chill and I was really missing the excitement of the previous show, although, again, I really like the way she manipulates sounds live.

And then she played a melody that was really familiar.  And once I realized that it was Portishead’s The Rip, I was ecstatic.  I’ve never seen Portishead live and although Beth Gibbons is coming to Philly, her solo stuff doesn’t interest me all that much.  But this version of The Rip was fantastic!  The guitar was perfect, the electronics kicked in exactly the right way and Cheek sang in the best Beth Gibbons style.  Hoy cow it was awesome.

So I was still in a good mood for the final song Two Face, a song she played last time that featured a little more of the chaos that I appreciated last time.

I actually had to wonder if L’Rain was crazier last time because they were opening for Animal Collective and contained themselves more for a less experimental headliner like Soccer Mommy.

 

2025 2022
Green Π Which Fork £
5 to 8 Hours a Day (WWwaG) ⊗ A Toes (Shelf Inside Your Head) £
Knead Bee ⊗ Find It €
Uncertainty Principle ⊗ Round Sun €
The Rip [Portishead cover] Kill Self €
Two Face € Blame Me €
Two Face €
Take Two €

£ L’Rain (2017)
€ Fatigue (2021)
⊗ I Killed Your Dog (2023)
Π I Saw the TV Glow soundtrack (2024)

 

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Soccer Mommy (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, September 18, 2021) [rescheduled from March 30, 2020]

Posted in Philadelphia, PA, Phoebe Bridgers, Slowdive, Soccer Mommy, Union Transfer on September 19, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: September 18, 2021] Soccer Mommy [moved from March 30, 2020]

I was supposed to see Soccer Mommy open for Phoebe Bridgers a few years back.  I felt sick on the way down to the show so I wound up coming home instead.

S. bought me her CD for some holiday in 2020 and I thought it would be fun to see her live.  I was supposed to see her back in March of 2020, but the show was pushed back until September 2021.   And in that time, something big must have happened to her because this show sold out! And the crowd was really intense about her.

As soon as Sophia Regina Allison (who is Soccer Mommy) came on stage, the crowd went bananas.  It was kind of funny because Sophie is so low key.

She had a pretty full band with her. I stood in front of her lead guitarist who really made some outstanding noises –a component that made her songs even more interesting to me).  Her new bassist (this was his first tour with them) had an amazing sound–buzzy and noisy but groovy at the same time.  Guitarist-keyboardist Rodrigo Avendano on the far side added some great textures and drummer Rollum Haas whom I could not see because I giant cymbal was in the way, played some amazing fills and really added a lot of intensity to these songs.

What I’m saying is that the album is good, but live, the songs were amazing.

Soccer Mommy only has two albums out.  Most of the songs came from the new(ish) album Color Theory.  I have to say that I was really surprised she played “Circle the Drain” second because I thought it was her big hit and would come at the end.  She must have a lot of hits that I don’t know about.

I had a hard time getting clips of Julian Powell because of the way he was hiding behind the carboard TVs, but I loved the way that he and Sophie harmonized the guitar licks on “Crawling in My Skin.” (more…)

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Squirrel Flower (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, September 18, 2021) [SOCCER MOMMY]

Posted in Caroline Polachek, Philadelphia, PA, Pictoria Vark, Soccer Mommy, Squirrel Flower, Union Transfer on September 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: September 18, 2021] Squirrel Flower

I had heard of Squirrel Flower from All Songs Considered and I was interested in seeing her live.  So I was pleased when she was announced as the opening act for Soccer Mommy.

Squirrel Flower is the stage name of Ella Williams who has been releasing music under this name for about six years.

The show started a little late, so when Ella and her band came out, we all cheered, until we realized they wee just setting up the gear and setlists.  A few minutes later Ella came out by herself and sang “I’ll Go Now.”  It was a remarkably slow song.  She payed stretched out chords and sang slowly over them.   A few minutes in, she bent down and did something at her feet and a looping melody began–I couldn’t tell if she played it live, but it did have a not that was a slightly off.  The song ended and everyone cheered.

She apologized for the “fake out” earlier and then started “Desert Wildflowers” in that same slow style. (more…)

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Tom Gilligan–Irish Drummers Volume 1: Interviews with 32 Irish Drummers (2019)

Posted in 1990, An Emotional Fish, Bad Brains, Bitch Falcon, Blades Club, Cactus World News, Cro-Mags, Cypress, Dave Grohl, Deep Purple, Dream Theater, Fangclub, Fontaines D.C., Frank Zappa, Gemma Hayes, Glen Hansard, Glenn Kotche, Green Day, Guns n' Roses, Hothouse Flowers, Marianne Faithfull, Metronomy, Midnight Oil, Montauk Hotel, My Little Funhouse, Neil Peart, Overhead The Albatross, Picturehouse, Pillow Queens, Pugwash, Queens of the Stone Age, Sepultura, Sinéad O'Connor, Snarky Puppy, Snow Patrol, Soccer Mommy, Stella Mozgawa, Sultans of Ping, The Commitments, The Coronas, The Frames, The Redneck Manifesto, The Who, Therapy?, Thin Lizzy, THUMPER, Tim Finn, Touts, Unsane, Vulpynes, Walking on Cars, Warpaint, Wilco on February 16, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MY LITTLE FUNHOUSE-Standunder (1991).

Drummer has a funny story about joining My Little Funhouse.  It’s especially funny given how young he was and how raunchy the band seems.

This album feels like a hair metal band whose second guitarist had just heard of grunge.  Lead singer Alan Lawlor sounds bratty and sleazy like an L.A. hair metal stud.

There’s some ripping guitar solos (“Destiny”) and big soaring ballads (“Wishing Well”) and there’s a dumb straight up rocker (“L.S.D.”).  There’s even the quiet intro (lighters up in the air) “sensitive” song (“breaks my heart/tears me apart”), “Anonymous.”

The one musical surprise is the summer guitar intro of “Been too Long” which sounds like it belongs to another song all together.  Although the bass/drum clap along is pretty apt.  “raintown” is another song that is a little unusual here–it feels like a B-side.  Lawlor’s vocals are toned way down and the production is much softer.

Perhaps the one thing that sets them apart from the West Coast metal is the song “Catholic Boy.”  Yup, it’s just as sexual/ist as a typical metal band, but the specificity of being Catholic seems very Irish to me.

My Little Funhouse opened for Guns N’ Roses when they toured Ireland.  And that makes perfect sense.  This album is completely of its time (or maybe a year too late).  With the right exposure, they would have been huge.  But this is the only thing they released before they broke up.

[READ: December 30, 2020] Irish Drummers Volume 1

I received this book at work and thought it would be interesting to look though.  I flipped through the names in the contents and was pretty sure I hadn’t heard of any of these drummers.  But it turns out I knew a lot of the bands they played in, just not their names.

Gilligan says that he created the website Irish Drummers several years ago.  It was an opportunity for him to interview Irish drummers and celebrate them.  Gilligan himself is a drummer but never really played with any bands.  Probably the most famous Irish drummer, U2’s Larry Mullen, Jr is not in this book, but he is on the website.

Gilligan thought it would be very cool to publish a book and here it is. The interviews are truncated for the book, you’ll get a lot more online.

Each interview has a picture (or two) and three to seven questions.

I have made some notes of interest from the drummers who had something unique to say. (more…)

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Soccer Mommy / Tomberlin (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, March 31, 2020) [POSTPONED]

Posted in Coronavirus, Philadelphia, PA, Phoebe Bridgers, Postponed, Quarantine, Soccer Mommy, Tomberlin, Union Transfer on March 31, 2020| Leave a Comment »

[POSTPONED: March 31, 2020] Soccer Mommy / Tomberlin

indexI was supposed to see Soccer Mommy open for Phoebe Bridgers a few years back.  I felt sick on the way down to the show so I wound up coming home instead.

I loved the name that Sophie Allison had chosen for her project.  Soccer Mommy had released a bunch of songs on bandcamp between 2015-2017. She put out her first “real” album just before I was supposed to see her.  She has since released Color Theory, which is getting rave reviews.  I am genuinely surprised she was able to headline Union Transfer, though.

NPR loves Soccer Mommy.  They also love Tomberlin, who is Sarah Beth Tomberlin.  I saw her Tiny Desk Concert, and thought she was okay.  I gather that her Tiny Desk Concert doesn’t really show what her live show would be like.

I was torn between this show and Vagabon on the same night. I suspect that I’d have picked Johnny Brenda’s over Union Transfer, but it’s also possible I would have just stayed home.  This was the eighteenth show I was interested in seeing in March.  Wow, what a jam-packed month.

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Vagabon / Angelica Garcia (Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia, PA, March 31, 2020) [POSTPONED]

Posted in Angelica Garcia, Coronavirus, Johnny Brenda's, Philadelphia, PA, Phoebe Bridgers, Postponed, Quarantine, Soccer Mommy, Vagabon on March 31, 2020| Leave a Comment »

[POSTPONED: March 31, 2020] Vagabon / Angelica Garcia

indexI really enjoyed Vagabon’s debut album.  It had a great indie rock quality, but the fact that Lætitia Tamko is originally from Cameroon gives her music a unique quality that makes it stand out.  I haven’t heard much of the new album, but I have heard she puts on an excellent show.

I saw Angelica Garcia open for Phoebe Bridgers and was really impressed.  She showcased an impressively diverse style of music. She sang in folk style, she later used a looping pedal.  She sang in Spanish and English and her voice was huge.

This was just one option for this Tuesday night and I was genuinely torn between this show and the Soccer Mommy show across town.

I hadn’t gotten a ticket for either of these shows and it’s possible I wasn’t going to go to either.

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Amanda Rea–“The Year of the Frog” (Harper’s, December 2017)

Posted in Amanda Rea, Amnesia, Harper's, Horses, Huh?, Humiliation, Marriage Trouble, Phoebe Bridgers, Short Story, Soccer Mommy, South X Lullaby, SXSW on March 28, 2018| Leave a Comment »

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”

I also like the way her chords are largely unexpected.  She plays a lot of chords high on the neck (but without a capo).  The melody that she plays (while playing the chords, which is cool) is also nicely compelling.

I don’t know if she is all folkie, but I’d like to check out more by her and now I’m even more bummed that I didn’t make the show.

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. (more…)

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