This weekend, Soccer Mommy made her stamp on the much-loved venue that is Project House, bringing along with her the bedroom pop support act, Bored At My Grandma’s House.
Poised to be an evening of lo-fi anthems, the opener commenced the stage with a humble air of grace, filling out the up-and-coming 1,000-person capacity space. With barely a screen in sight, singer Amber, alongside her guitarist, brought every patron in the house together in a gentle sway, adequately setting a tranquil tone that was to follow for the remainder of the evening.
Shortly thereafter came the main act, Soccer Mommy — or Sophie as she later invited us to call her — to carry out her own sound check, making sure every detail of the equipment and stage was just right before performing to the sea of doting fans there waiting for her.
As the stage shone purple, the room erupted with the well-known opening chords of ‘Abigail’, one of her most popular tracks, and one based on the hit game Stardew Valley. Full of longing and fantasy, the track naturally led into a string of the Tennessee star’s most loved repertoire.
Though lyrically sombre, ‘Circle Down The Drain’ spurred on a tangible togetherness amongst her fans, perhaps testament to her utterly uncut honesty around the trials and tribulations of adulthood within her words.
The likes of ‘Driver’ — one of her latest hits from her 2024 album, Evergreen — and ‘Shotgun’ rapidly followed, with the crowd chanting the chorus’ lyrics ”So whenever you want me I’ll be around / I’m a bullet in a shotgun waiting to sound” in unison.
Dialling down the tone as the stage hues turned blue, the singer boasted her range, capturing everyone’s gaze and fully-fledged attention as she played more hits from her grief-stricken latest album. Showcasing some of her more lo-fi hits such as ‘Dreaming of Falling’ and ‘Thinking of You’, the halfway mark of the night felt like a real exploration of the singer’s psyche, startlingly relatable by the masses that came to witness her in all her glory.
Speaking to DIY before the release of Evergreen, she denoted the juxtaposing nature of her most recent body of work: “Grief definitely isn’t linear. I wanted the album to have this back and forth between feeling like you’re sad and drowning in that feeling. Sometimes feeling all of this is actually beautiful and very lifting.” It’s this very sentiment that characterised the singer’s night in Armley, with stunning gems such as ‘Some Sunny Day’ scattered throughout her carefully curated setlist.
Delivering some more sonically solemn tracks within her discography came ‘Lost’, before the band disbanded to allow the frontwoman to perform her 2018 hit ‘Still Clean’ in an incredibly raw and intimate setting. As the crowd witnessed Sophie perform, rather than her mere moniker, Soccer Mommy, the energy in the room shifted somewhat, making the singer feel just like ‘one of us’ with her open struggle and storytelling.
However, the night drew to a close on a grungier, punchier plane, with the hit ‘Your Dog’, a bold, vivacious comeback anthem, before returning to an adoring crowd for her final track, ‘Don’t Ask Me’.
A night in Leeds characterised by the themes of romance, melancholy, and longing, Soccer Mommy proved once again why she’s a must-listen for those twenty-somethings navigating the rocky roads of adulthood.
Words by Ruby Brown
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