Written by Clementine Daniel and Julia Steinhouse
Photos by Julia Steinhouse
The night started off with a bizarre series of events, as we entered the Hollywood Forever Cemetery at 9:15PM and drove right past the venue. In our defense, we saw a few cars heading in the same direction and decided that we trusted them. After wandering around the candlelit mausoleums for around 10 minutes, we realized that our parking spot in the center of the cemetery was nowhere near the Masonic Lodge, a tiny old-Hollywood concert venue at the gates to the famous cemetery. We hopped back in our car and pulled into a spot along the curb, uncomfortably close to the venue doors.
At a small folding table in an empty parking lot sat two women in folding chairs with a small yellow-bulb lamp and a list. We received wristbands and were directed nowhere in particular but “in.” We climbed a staircase past an eerily quiet courtyard into a chandelier-lit entrance room, empty save for a small bar and merch stand.
Upon entering the main room, we looked at each other with simultaneous confusion and excitement. This did not seem like your typical concert, but instead an intimate hangout with Sophia Allison, better known for her stage name, Soccer Mommy. She stood before the crowd of no more than 100 people in a long white dress and blue glittery eyeshadow, against a backdrop of dreamy blue and purple toned lighting, along with a scattering of pine trees illuminated by string lights. Her right arm was tattooed with a moon and a bundle of flowers; her left a skull and a rose. This all made perfect sense yet no sense at all, like her moniker “soccer mommy.” In an “Ask Me Anything” Reddit page from 2018, Allison replied to a fan’s question that the tongue-in-cheek phrase was pulled from an old Twitter username of hers from when she had just started making music. She found the name funny, and it stuck. In spite of the fake name, Soccer Mommy appeared strikingly authentic and tangible against the backdrop of mystical foliage and forest, intimately close to us in the crowd, unlike the typical indie rock concerts we had grown accustomed to.
The first thing we noticed upon entry to the concert hall was the lack of smartphones held up by attendees. The crowd stood in salient solitude before Soccer Mommy, eyes and bodies in suspension with her echoing guitar chords. “Why is no one filming?” we whispered to each other, unfamiliar with the ease and presence with which the crowd listened, particularly in such an uniquely intimate setting.
After she finished an unreleased song titled “M,” the first track we caught the full length of was another unreleased song that she called “Lost.” As she struck her first chord on her sky-blue electric guitar, Soccer Mommy told the crowd, “I’m gonna do a thing here on the ground for a second,” bending down onto her knees and grabbing hold of a vocal pedal on the stage. Being entirely solo and acoustic, the concert had the potential to be monotonous, or even sleepy. Yet instead of a quiet dullness, Soccer Mommy began crafting a dreamlike trance over the crowd as she breathed into the pedal and a soft airy hum spilled out of the speakers.
She then moved into “Henry,” a well-loved track that feels simultaneously comforting and emotive. Her lyricism is playful, while the stripped-back nature of her performance illuminated the more melancholy and nostalgic elements of her music. Each song felt like a reflection on a past love or a past life, as she wove in reflections about the periods of time that inspired each of her songs. Some anecdotal introductions included, “sometimes you write songs like that when you are seventeen” and “this is the stuff I was playing at bars back in college.”
As she continued to flip between new, unreleased songs and 8-year-old tracks from her college years, Soccer Mommy came upon her 2018 song, “Skin,” which she had seen requested in a comment from a fan. “I never play this one, I hope I remember how to play it,” she laughed. The fan who had left the comment stood with us in the crowd, calling out “that was me, I said that!” with giddy excitement as she struck the first chord.
Anticipation mounted throughout the crowd as Soccer Mommy casually mentioned that a special guest was going to join her for the next song. We looked at each other with shared low expectations, scanning the room for hints of who it could be. Suddenly, a 5’5 figure with short bleach-blonde hair casually dressed in black jeans and a t-shirt ran through the sparse crowd and onstage. “Holy shit. That’s Phoebe Bridgers,” Clem said, as her presence seemed to complete the strange sense of serendipity we had felt all night. Even then, the crowd was peaceful, but more phones did pop up as the pair embraced on stage like old friends. They recounted fond memories of touring together in 2018, telling the crowd that the way to build muscle is to eat a ton of RX Bars and lift heavy sound equipment. The lighthearted mood quickly turned somber as Bridgers and Mommy (ha) covered Elliott Smith’s “The Biggest Lie” from his 1995 self-titled album “Elliott Smith.” Just as quickly as she had hopped on stage, Bridgers was soon nowhere to be seen, leaving Soccer Mommy alone again on stage for her remaining set.
After an encore of her hit, “Scorpio Rising,” Soccer Mommy modestly thanked the crowd for their support and eagerness to hear so many new and unreleased songs. Everyone smiled, almost like a shrug, as if it had been hard. Instead, we all felt lucky that our Tuesday night at the gates of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery had been filled with such magic at the hands of Soccer Mommy. “Thanks you guys for being good sports about the music,” she had said. “It’s weird to go to a show where you don’t know the songs, so thank you for listening.” And we want to thank you, Soccer Mommy, for guiding us through a surreal night spent reminiscing on all the Henrys in our lives at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
