Doors open at 6PM | Show starts at 7PM | All Ages | Tickets start at $25

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Sometimes, Forever, the immersive and compulsively replayable new Soccer Mommy full-length, cements Sophie Allison’s status as one of the most gifted songwriters making rock music right now. Packed with clever nods to synth-filled subgenres like new wave and goth, the album finds Sophie broadening the borders of her aesthetic without abandoning the unsparing lyricism and addictive melodies that make Soccer Mommy songs so easy to obsess over. Sometimes, Forever is the 24-year-old’s boldest and most aesthetically adventurous work, a mesmerizing collection that feels both informed by the past and explicitly of the moment. It’s a fresh peek into the mind of an artist who synthesizes everything — retro sounds, personal tumult, the relatable disorder of modern life — into original music that feels built to last a long time. Maybe even forever.

Sophie was only 20 when she put out Clean, her arresting studio debut, which became one of the most beloved coming-of-age albums of the 2010s. Its bigger-sounding followup, color theory, brought more acclaim and continued to win her fans far outside of the lo-fi bedroom pop scene she cut her teeth playing in. But with all the highs came inevitable lows. Navigating young adulthood is often spiritually draining, to say nothing of the artless administrative chaos associated with being a popular full-time musician. And yet she never stops writing, consistently transforming bouts of instability into emotionally generous music. The latest culmination of that process is Sometimes, Forever, which sees Sophie once again tapping into the turn-of-the-millenium sensibilities she’s known for. This time, though, she advances her self-made sonic world beyond the present and into the future with experimental-minded production, an expanded mood board of vintage touchstones, and some of her most sophisticated songwriting to date.

To support her vision, Sophie enlisted producer Daniel Lopatin, a.k.a Oneohtrix Point Never, whose recent behind-the-boards credits include the Uncut Gems movie score and The Weeknd’s chart-topping Dawn FM. While the pairing might seem unexpected, active listening reveals a kindred creativity; both artists are interested in utilizing memory-triggering sounds and melodies to make invigorating music that transcends its influences. On Sometimes, Forever, Lopatin employs his boundless synth vocabulary and knack for meticulous arrangements to complement Sophie’s well-crafted compositions. The result is an epic-feeling mix of raw-edged live takes and studio wizardry.

Nowhere is Sophie’s exploration more spellbinding than “Unholy Affliction,” a first-half highlight with a paranoid post-rock rhythm and cursed-sounding synths. “I don’t want the money / That fake kind of happy,” she sings with dead-eyed disaffection. In addition to showcasing Sophie’s appreciation for textures that are at once pretty and unsettling, “Unholy Affliction” foregrounds one of Sometimes, Forever’s more compelling narrative tensions: the push and pull between Sophie’s desire to make meaningful art and her skepticism about the mechanics of careerism. “I hate so many parts of the music industry, but I also want success,” Sophie says. “And not just success — perfection. I want to make things that are flawless, that perfectly encapsulate what I'm thinking and feeling. It’s an unachievable goal that keeps you constantly chasing it.”

Sometimes, Forever fixates on those sorts of contradictory forces: desire and apathy, ecstasy and misery, good and evil, self-control and wildness. Straight-up love songs — like the ultra-catchy “Shotgun,” which likens romance to a chemical high without the gnarly comedown — rub up against much gloomier fare, like the Sylvia Plath-referencing “Darkness Forever,” a sludge-rock fever dream from the album’s midsection. The weightless “newdemo” spins delicately layered harmonies and mystical synths into an end-of-the-world reverie; the impending apocalypse has never sounded so jaw-droppingly beautiful. “I didn't want to make something super depressing without any sense of magic,” Sophie explains.

The title Sometimes, Forever refers to the idea that both good and bad feelings are cyclical. “Sorrow and emptiness will pass, but they will always come back around — as will joy,” Sophie says. “At some point you’re forced to say, I'll just have to take both.” She articulates this sentiment on the gut-punch opening of “Still,” her clear voice imbued with a heartbreaking blend of wisdom and hurt: “I don’t know how to feel things small / It’s a tidal wave or nothing at all.” Sophie understands that Sometimes, Forever is lyrically dark, with macabre imagery haunting even its most upbeat passages. But because she’s in a better place than when she wrote the songs, she has no trouble luxuriating in the moments of uncomplicated bliss that coexist alongside the bleakness.

One of those moments comes on the record’s penultimate track, “Feel It All The Time,” a song-length metaphor about a resilient old truck. “I wanna drive out where the sun shines / drown out the noise and the way I feel,” goes the hook, a heart-bursting blur of shoegaze-y Americana. By song’s end the narrator returns to a state of world-weariness, resigned to the fact that she probably can’t outrun her demons forever. But for a few flickering moments — Sophie’s voice freewheeling over warm guitar ripples, the sun-drenched sound of a generational talent at the height of her powers — it feels like maybe she could keep on driving, faster and faster until all of that existential darkness is behind her, just a cloud of red dust in a dirty rearview mirror.

In the third week of August 2019, along the windy coastline of southern Washington, musician, and singer Audrey Kang arrived at a festival of kites. She made the stop during a trek across the Pacific Northwest, where she camped, hiked, surfed, and wandered alone in the area’s lush natural reserves. “I get a lot of inspiration from nature,” she says. “If I look at the sky and do a lot of nothing in nature alone—I don’t know. The songs just come.” The trip followed a series of endings in her life—work, love, relationships—that felt like an upheaval. Yet Audrey found peace and contentment there on the coast. “I really didn’t know what my life was going to look like,” she remembers. “But at the kite festival, I knew that each day I’d see a lot of beautiful kites, and each evening I’d watch the sunset and sleep on the beach. I felt like nothing could hurt me.”

What Audrey experienced during that trip, what she realized while watching the kites, would plant the seeds for A Color of the Sky, the third album by her band Lightning Bug. A record equally about quiet introspection and broad existential questions, A Color of the Sky reflects the journey of its songwriter emerging from intense self-doubt to find herself changed. “I trusted no one, and was very unhappy with who I was,” Audrey shares. “The key shift in my psyche was the realization that I was the sole person responsible for my life and happiness. That life holds no more and no less than the very purpose you give it yourself.” She illustrates this realization in rich emotional detail on opening song “The Return,” where unadorned guitars waver timidly over sparse drums before slowly transforming into a tapestry of synth, flute, strings, and Audrey’s soft-glowing voice.

Growth and self-acceptance have rarely sounded so otherworldly—yet still so intimate—as they do across A Color of the Sky. Lead single “The Right Thing Is Hard To Do” brings together a dreamy country motif with Lightning Bug’s boundless guitar pop to transportive effect. As Audrey examines her struggles with vulnerability and self-worth, connecting those personal issues with global ones, the music sways and glimmers like water in moonlight. It’s followed by the enchanting “September Song, pt. II”, which embodies the crisp clarity brought on by the transition to fall. A bed of finger-plucked guitars surround Audrey’s hushed lines about the colors of sunsets, the truth that change brings—only to be swept away in a rush of pattering drums, downy synth pads, and heavy bass. It feels as much like a vivid portrait of the changing seasons as it does a cathartic psychedelic experience. Kicking off the record’s second half, “Song of the Bell” rolls in like a ghostly fog, billowing with blown-out guitar noise and haunted by layers of wispy vocal melodies. The song quickly dissipates, as if evaporated by the sun—its questions of self-actualization and fulfillment lingering in the air long after.

Unsurprisingly for an album about transforming one’s inner world, A Color of the Sky follows after Lightning Bug’s outer world changed as well. Their 2019 album October Song caught the attention of long-standing indie label Fat Possum, who reissued the LP and signed the band onto their roster. Audrey and her collaborators, Kevin Copeland (guitar, vocals) and Logan Miley (engineer, synths, textures), also added new members to their live band, who joined them in recording for the first time. Along with Dane Hagen (drums) and Vincent Puleo (bass), Lightning Bug turned a rundown old house in the Catskills into a makeshift studio. But despite the new surroundings and opportunities, some things didn’t change at all. “We stuck to the same DIY, our-own-world approach as previous records,” Audrey elaborates on their recording process. Which seems abundantly clear listening to A Color of the Sky. This isn’t a young band searching for its identity, but rather a cohesive group of artists honing their sound to perfection.

Lightning Bug recording together as a live band helped make A Color of the Sky feel more organic, dynamic, and full than their previous albums. It also enhanced Audrey’s newfound sense of clarity and confidence in her songwriting. “Songs in the past sometimes felt muddled, or I felt lost where to take them,” she elaborates. “But for this one, each song felt like a whole entity from conception.” The change is undeniable. Her voice is more pronounced than ever, the arrangements streamlined, the messages more palpable—all in service of an immersive emotional resonance. “I want listeners to explore their own interior worlds,” she concludes. “It’s about learning to trust yourself, about being deeply honest with yourself, and about how self-acceptance yields a selfless form of love.”