It was a very chill, very pleasant evening during Thursday night’s sold-out Soccer Mommy set at Thalia Hall. The hour-and-a-half long set was the first of a two-night residency for the Nashville-based band and its leader, Sophia Allison, who has made a name for herself by crafting emotionally piercing tunes that speak to the isolation, yearning, and hope of being young.
Soccer Mommy’s music is easy to fall in love with. It’s poignant and piercing — the kind of music you’d listen to during your most vulnerable moments as a teen or young adult. She is the soundtrack of youth, of yearning and observation.
I imagine most concert-goers spend a lot of time listening to her albums alone with headphones, canceling out any noise from the real world. Having the chance to witness one of their favorite artists in the flesh and not just through intense moments of solitude must have been especially poignant.
It was unsurprising then that the concert’s audience was not to be roused. The largely 20- and 30-something audience was quite lovely and respectful toward the band and toward other audience members, giving folks room to breathe and enjoy themselves despite the packed main floor. Overall, it made for a warm, welcoming room scene that permeated throughout the night.
This level of respect translated to other moments throughout the night. In recent days, I’m quite used to an artist entering the stage and young concertgoers whipping out their cell phones to record videos or take photos. Calm, they are not.
Yet, Soccer Mommy’s audience was a little different. While there were a handful of phones that popped in and out, most fans decided to focus on the music and stay present. This made for a quite pleasant environment that reminded me of pre-pandemic times.
These newer tracks from her latest album, 2024’s “Evergreen,” were some of my favorites from the evening. While she still employed her signature elements of sweet-sounding melodies and lyrics of longing, “Evergreen” also incorporates moments of propulsive heat, like on “Driver.”
Her occasional twangy guitar was replaced with reverb-drenched guitar sounds on “M,” a dreampop wonder that sounds straight out of the ’90s. The red-heavy lighting and simple stage setup was a perfect match for Allison’s biting lyrics and energetic gut punch.
The propulsive buildup to the end of “Salt in Wound” was a fantastic jolt of energy that kept the momentum going. It was one of the most compelling moments of the night — fully alive and powerful.
Still, she left lots of room for many of her biggest tracks, like “circle the drain” off of the 2020 album “color theory.” Fan favorite “Your Dog,” off of 2018’s “Clean,” sounded just as fresh and pointed as it did when it was first released. It’s the sort of track — lyrically, sonically — that’s as relevant as it ever was, especially if we’re considering the messiness of modern love and romance.
Not everything that evening was perfect. There was something of an issue with the sound quality. While the guitars, bass, and drums all sounded fine and tight, it was difficult to understand Allison’s voice and lyrics from time to time. Singing close to the mic sometimes muffled her lyrics, making the songs sound like atmospheric jam sessions rather than clear performances.
At first, this was OK, but it became something of an annoyance as the show progressed and somewhat took away from the overall experience of the show.
However, it did not completely ruin the energy. Many fans gently bopped along to the music. And things were quite crisp for my favorite performance of the evening, when the group performed “Feel It All the Time,” from 2022’s “Sometimes, Forever.”
Before she began to play, Allison addressed the audience, something that only happened a handful of times during the evening. The track, as she explained, was about her beloved truck and the freedom it provided. The truck recently died and she seemed quite upset about it, even if her band member’s father was trying to repair it.
“I feel like Chicago’s a truck town,” she said. Whether that’s true is debatable, yet the lack of audience agreement didn’t stop her from sharing how much her ride meant to her, or taking us into the freedom and purpose she felt from it.
“I wanna drive out for where the sun shines / drown out the noise and the way I feel,” she sang. It was another emotionally vulnerable moment in an evening full of them, and for this reviewer, it was quite potent in the end.
Britt Julious is a freelance critic.
