Soccer Mommy is the project of Sophie Allison, a Nashville native. She’s toured with Mitski, Jay Som, Slowdive, and others, and was featured in the New York Times article “Rock’s Not Dead, It’s Ruled By Women.” Her debut studio album, Clean, was released in 2018.
(Photo Credit: Natalia Mantini)
In place of a more traditional year-end best-of list, Talkhouse has asked some of our favorite artists to choose their favorite album of 2018 and tell us all about it.
—The Talkhouse Team
I picked Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves. I heard it pretty soon after it came out, I think in early March—we were on tour and we played it in the van because we had seen that it was getting a ton of press. I’d never really listened to her, but my drummer actually knows her steel player; He said it that it was poppier and that he liked it a lot, so we checked it out.
When I first heard the album I was into it, but it wasn’t The Best Thing In The Whole World to me; but very quickly, I became obsessed with it. It’s something I can listen to pretty much any time. It can be sad, but it can also be a kind of party music, and then it’s also good for when you’re driving on tour—it’s so interesting to drive along to. I also went back and listened to all of Kacey’s major label albums, and I really like the first one, Same Trailer Different Park, a lot too.
It kind of has this early-2000s vibe to it—this kind of pop, folky, singer-songwriter type of thing—but it’s not exactly early-2000s. It also has this new kind of take. It uses sounds like steel guitar in really weird ways that’s kind of atmospheric, which I always really like a lot. I think it adds a lot to it. The songs are really well-written too—I like all the melodies and chords. It’s hard to pick a favorite song on the album, because I like them all, but I really like “Love Is A Wild Thing” a lot; that’s one I always play. It has a little alt-country vibe to it. It’s definitely still pop, but something about it is just a little more heartfelt. Plus I like the chorus a lot, and how the drums come in at the end. It has a very nice driving vibe to it. I also like the very first line on the album, at the beginning of “Slow Burn”: “Born in a hurry/Always late/Haven’t been early since ‘88.”
I think the sound of Golden Hour is kind of unique to this year. I feel like there’s been a lot of indie-pop stuff, like mixing drums and drum machines in the way that she does, and how she kind of mixes this atmospheric vibe into pop music. I feel like a lot of pop has had this atmospheric vibe to it this year. It fits in with the way a lot of country music is starting to sound—it seems to be kind of leaning more towards pop whenever I hear it on the radio. It definitely sounds modern. I don’t think it sounds like something that could have been made five years ago.
As told to Annie Fell.
(Photo Credit: left, Natalia Mantini)
