The Friday Dispatch
Soccer Mommy, Crack Cloud, Sophie Jamieson, Connor Youngblood, Duncan Browne, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra
The second becoming of Soccer Mommy
Soccer Mommy's second act is underlined by the release of Evergreen, Sophie Allison's most intimate work to date. For this week’s cover, Laura David meets the Nashville-raised songwriter to talk about finding balance and acceptance in both life and art.
In the years since her 2018 debut, Allison has gained an ever-expanding cult following. In that time, her musical prowess has grown in tandem, blossoming from penning simple, lo-fi indie licks into making textured, dynamic arrangements that still have a no-nonsense, guitar-driven appeal.
After her last record Sometimes, Forever, Allison suffered a deeply profound loss, altering her world forever. To get through it, she knew a new level of responsibility was required of her. Part of her second growing up, then, was also entering a second life, a reality that she knew she would have to spend forever adjusting to. Writing Evergreen became Allison’s way of starting that process of moving through instead of grasping for the past: “Obviously, on the album, there’s a lot of talk about loss specifically and not having someone there anymore,” she says. “That’s a huge change. And I feel like I haven’t felt a change so sudden and so drastic since going away to college. Everything was suddenly completely different between one day and the next.”
"It’s this push and pull of trying to cling to parts of what you had or what once was, but also you can’t, and it’s gone and you’re different. It can really rock your shit. You can’t just get back to a happiness you once had or a certain way you felt before in your life. It’s like, you’re different now, and you have to change a lot.”
With Evergreen, Allison she truly feels that she’s pushed the boundaries of her sound and her talents: “I really wanted it to have a little bit of folksiness. I didn’t want to make a folk record, but I wanted there to be some of that energy,” she continues. “I wanted to mix stuff like acoustic guitars with atmospheric, beautiful sounds. I wanted it to feel like a summer night scene.”
Read the full profile by Laura David now over on Best Fit.
Crack Cloud perform their live version of "The Medium" for The Line of Best Fit
Visiting Crouch End studios this week, Canadian collective Crack Cloud collaborated with Best Fit to put on a live version of their song “The Medium”, which appears on their recent album Red Mile. Their Best Fit session follows on from their recent UK and EU dates, where they performed this sped up version of the song. They'll support The Voidz in Los Angeles and New York this week. Visit crackcloud.ca for more information.
The introduction
Each week, Best Fit will be bringing you mini-interviews with artists on the come-up - and it’s happening exclusively on Substack. Today, we present Sophie Jamieson.
Name: Sophia Maev Homayounfar Jamieson
Age: 34
Hometown: London
Describe your sound in 5-10 words: Intimate, tense, melodic, yearning, rough around the edges
How you started playing music:
I wrote my first song on the piano age 11, then my mum gave me her old guitar, taught me 4 chords and left me to it. I learned to play from the Avril Lavigne songbook my aunt gave me for my 12th birthday (!)
Best book you’ve read recently:
“When Women Were Birds” by Terry Tempest Williams. I read a passage from it on Laura Marling's incredible Substack, was captivated by the prose and ordered it... it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever read... meditative, poetic, wild.
A lyric you wish you’d written and why
"Rocks you keep in your car door / have travelled through far more than your life" from "Bright Green Vibrant Grey" by Helena Deland. Every time the words come round they make me smile with their wisdom and depth. It's the kind of pearl of wisdom an elderly woman might deliver. But it was written by this musician I love, my own age, who lost her mother.
Sophie Jamieson’s next single will be out on October 23rd.
Up next this week….
On the new music front, we’ve been particularly excited about the release of rising indie star Orla Gartland’s Everybody Needs a Hero. It’s a fun, adventurous showing from the Irish artist, who’s committed herself to making music on her own terms. Also out this week is Audrey Nuna’s genre-bending TRENCH; Jordana’s Lively Premonition; Bon Iver’s brand new EP, SABLE; Confidence Man’s danceable 3AM (LA LA LA); and, of course, Kylie Minogue’s Tension II.
Something Old, Something New
Every week, we share recommendations from the Best Fit community on two iconic records — one from the past, one from the present. This week, Nashville-based Conner Youngblood offers his thoughts on Duncan Browne by Duncan Browne (1973) and V by Unknown Mortal Orchestra (2023).
I could not even start to tell you how I came across Duncan Browne’s self-titled album in high school, but I bought a copy of it on eBay and it became the only thing I listened to in my car for years.
The album sounds like the best album solo Paul McCartney he never made. The songwriting is fantastic, the guitar playing is great, and each song has its own individual moment in the spotlight. I would argue that the album/artist is more so unknown than underrated. I feel like it’s just one big Netflix placement away from breaking through and having a Nick Drake “Pink Moon”-esque renaissance.
Personal favorites would include “Country Song”, “Over the Reef”, “In a Mist”.
Nostalgia might be playing a big role here, but I just listened to it again while writing this, and I think it holds up.
For me, sometimes it is just a matter of luck when an album gets downloaded on my phone. Right place, right time. But once you make it past the “liked” and “playlists” and actually just land an entirely “downloaded” album, it is a guarantee to be played 50+ times throughout the next year whether I like it or not. V by Unknown Mortal Orchestra was downloaded before a flight a couple of years ago and has now accompanied on all of my travels ever since. I didn’t think there was any way to like it as much as Sex & Food or Multi-Love, yet here we are. Songs like “Guilty Pleasures” and “Nadja” are real keepers. Ruban Nielson is an extremely creative songwriter and guitar player that seems to really be having a fun time while making these songs, plus, I enjoy the subtle use of humor interlaced into a lot of the writing. Lighthearted whilst extremely complicated songwriting going together like yang and yang.
Conner’s album Cascades, Cascading, Cascadingly is out now.
Listen to the week in new music by following our Discovery playlist
Dropping at midnight every Thursday, follow our playlist for a taste of the best new music from the most exciting breaking artists – 20 new tracks, top-loaded from the last five days in music and on repeat in the Best Fit office right now.
Leading the selection this week are new tracks from Chinese American Bar, Deb Never, Bondo, Casper Grey, and coverstar Sunna Margaret.
Hand in Hive celebrate ten years
Our friends at boutique indie label Hand in Hive - who have been home to the likes of Divorce, A.O.Gerber, Gracie Gray and Tancred – are celebrating their first decade with a party at The Lexington in London on 26 November. Joni and TV Priest are among those set to perform and it’s entirely free with charity donations on the door encouraged and all proceeds going to Bipolar UK. Get your tickets now from dice.fm.