Stream: Soccer Mommy, ‘Bloodstream’

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Soccer Mommy (Photo by Brian Ziff)

“There’s someone talking in my forehead that says I’ll never be enough / and happiness is like a firefly on summer evenings / feel it slipping through my fingers but I can’t catch it in my hands,” Sophie Allison sighs on her new single as Soccer Mommy, “Bloodstream.”

The song is her latest from her album “Color Theory,” out Friday. It’s the follow-up to 2018’s breakout “Clean” and an album that Allison — all of 22 years old — says deals in part with “youth and aging” and the problems that pile up as years go. It figures to resonate with not only her peers but listeners twice and even three times her age. Her plaintive indie-rock is the perfect vehicle for that most tricky of feelings, nostalgia.

“I want the record to feel like a relic from the past that’s been damaged and degraded with age, because it kind of represents the problems that I’ve developed as I’ve grown up, and how they’ve changed me,” says Allison, who breaks down the record — which was produced by Gabe Wax (“Clean”) and mixed by Lars Stalfors — into three sections symbolized by the colors blue, yellow and gray.

“Blue symbolizes sadness and depression,” the Nashville-bred songwriter says. “The songs in this section are ‘Bloodstream,’ ‘Circle the Drain’ ‘Royal Crew Up’ and ‘Night Swimming.’ These all represent different parts of sadness/depression. The next section, yellow, symbolizes sickness — both physical and mental. These songs are ‘Crawling in My Skin,’ ‘Yellow Is the Color of My Eyes’ and ‘Up the Walls.’ This section is about my anxiety, my mother’s terminal illness, paranoia and how all of those things have affected my relationships with people. The third and final section is gray, which represents darkness, emptiness and loss. These song (‘Lucy,’ ‘Stain’ and ‘Gray Light’) are about a fear of death, inner demons, and trauma.”

||| Stream: “Bloodstream”

||| Also: Stream “Yellow is the Color of Her Eyes,” “Lucy” and “Circle the Drain”

||| Live: Soccer Mommy appears Thursday at Amoeba (5 p.m., free). She also headlines the Fonda Theatre on April 30, with Emily Reo opening. Tickets.