Song Exploder - Soccer Mommy - Circle the Drain

Episode Date: February 26, 2020

Sophie Allison makes music under the name Soccer Mommy. Her debut album came out in 2018, when she was 20 years old, and the New York Times named it one of the best album of the year. Her second album, Color Theory, comes out this week, and it includes this song, "Circle the Drain." In this episode, she takes "Circle the Drain" apart and explains how it was influenced by songs from her childhood. songexploder.net/soccer-mommy

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi-Kesh Hirway. Sophie Allison makes music under the name Soccer Mommy. Her debut album came out in 2018 when she was 20 years old, and the New York Times named it one of the best albums of the year. This week, her second album comes out, and it includes this song, Circle the Drain. I spoke to Sophie while she was in her hometown of Nashville, and in this episode, she takes Circle the Drain apart and explains how it was influenced by Song. from her childhood. I'm Sophie from soccer mommy.

When I started writing Circle of Drain, I was in the van, actually, on a West Coast tour, and I was in the backseat playing my guitar. And the van is kind of the only time I had to, you know, sit and play guitar somewhere that people weren't going to be listening to me. I like that, and the fact that there's noise, like white noise that makes it kind of hard to hear me in the back. You know, it's the same as getting privacy at home. And that's kind of some of the only downtime you find on tour.

So it's the perfect time to try to write. Whenever I write songs, the first thing I always come up with is the guitar stuff. With Circle the Drain, it was the chord progression. As soon as I got these chords, a whole vibe of a song came into my head. When I was writing Circle the Drain, I was feeling pretty low. honestly, even though I was like everything in my life was going great.

Like I was doing the job I wanted to do. I had love in my life, had friends, but I was still feeling really low. And, you know, it just kind of started coming out of me. I had this, like, idea in my head for the melody.

The chorus came first. I write music. I've given reasons for sadness. You know, I've, like, been going through a breakup or I've been hurt by someone or something like that. I feel like there's usually a reason. But there was, like, really nothing going wrong in my life besides internally. You know, there's not even anything really emotional that had happened to me that I was hurting over.

It's just, like, useless sadness, I guess. You know, it starts to make you feel like, oh, my God, how many more times can I do this? I'm like losing it a little bit right now. Like, I don't know how many times I can pick myself back up. But you have to find some way to get it out. And I think music is another way to talk about it. You know, the first and second verses are kind of about these things I want for myself, for my own calmness and sanity a little bit.

and then the second and third verse. Those ones kind of came within the week because we were traveling every day, so I was just kind of working more on the song. The chorus and the verse have some different chords in them, but they start on the same chord. And I kind of hate in a song where there's no change.

I want to deviate from it in some kind of pre-chorus that changes the mood for a second. So I threw in those chords. I first recorded the demo in my sister's room of my parents' house on my four track. Most of my gear was there, and I had just moved out of their house six months before. So I had to go over there to get the stuff,

and I just started recording, basically, as soon as I got there. Once I recorded the demo, I was like, this could be great. If I do it right, this could be really awesome. It just feels like I felt when I was a little kid and I was hearing stuff like Torn or, like, soak up the sun or anything like that. Torn by Natalie and Bruglia came out in 1997. The year Sophie was born, and Soak Up the Sun by Cheryl Crow came out when she was five.

It hits you in the heart. in that kind of way, and it also makes you want to laugh and, like, sing along to it, I guess. It's this weird mixture of, like, really sad. And it's also, like, just makes you want to scream it a little bit. When I wrote the song, I really felt like it was the perfect opportunity to do all these things that I loved about 2000s pop music. That's when I fell in love with music. And it just feels like, you know, a time when I wasn't stressed out about everything. and was just kind of excited about music

and just wanted to sing along to stuff. And I've never wanted to stop. And it's always been a driving passion for me. So I had so many ideas for production for making it sound just like the summery, watery, poppy, like 2000s song that it was born to be in my heart. Gabe Wax is a producer,

that I met when I was still in college, I felt like he just understood everything I wanted to do so well. And so, yeah, when it came time to do the second album, I wanted to do it with Gabe. My band, when I recorded, we had been playing together for like a year and touring a ton. So the band is a big part of it. Most of the days at the beginning were us kind of learning the songs.

Everyone had heard the demos and kind of, listen to them, but they needed full arrangements. So the way we started in the studio was we just started getting live takes of everything down. It was Ryan L. L. on drums. Graham gets on bass. Julian Powell on guitar. Me.

And Rodrigo Avondano playing keys. When it comes to everybody's parts, I like to let people make their own parts because I think that that makes it so much more fun and interesting, and it makes everybody happier. That was kind of what the whole first week or two was about. We were all like, this has got that early 2000s, like Cheryl will grow energy, and we've got to channel it, and Gabe will keep pushing us until we get something that feels amazing.

We just wanted it to shimmer. I actually came up with the lead guitar lines in the van around the time I wrote the song. It's such a huge part that it really needs to poke out and Gabe came up with the idea of doubling it with baritone to make it feel more present. I had the idea for drum machines before we got in the studio and I really wanted that kind of like beeping

and like a booping kind of drum machine. But it wasn't enough. We needed something making it hit a little harder. All of those like early 2000 songs A lot of them have some drum machine that's mixed really low in with the drums, so it just makes the drums really smack. That is all Julian on guitar. I don't know if you've ever heard of this guitar pedal made by hologram, the Infinite Jets. But it can kind of allow you to make these amazing drones and scents with your guitar that just can be so beautiful.

We literally just gave him a couple turns sitting in the tracking room with an amp and some pedals and just kind of making these long tonal drones that would just add some, like, beauty into the song. I think he definitely got that kind of like light filtering through water kind of imagery in the tone. I just wanted it to have this really like water-themed vibe, you know, to match the circle the drain part. I was trying to be like, how can I make this sound like you're in like a bathtub or something? I literally just found like some bubble sounds. And I had my phone plugged up to the pro tools. And I would just play these bubble sounds at like random parts to kind of like build it.

And I love them. Oh my gosh. They add so much like, oh, wow. She really is trying to make it sound like we're like underwater. You know, it passes the subtle parts and takes it along. into screaming it in your face. And then I had the idea of it dropping down to nothing for a moment. And Gabe wanted to make it sound like you're like starting a tape on a cassette player, which I love.

So it's kind of building back in from this broken down thing. And it gives you that like double satisfaction of like, oh, stuff's starting to build in. Now we're kind of in. and then this even bigger explosion. I put those backing vocals through like a big phaser. Because I was like, I wanted to have this weird swirling sound to it. Like, I want it to sound like it's everywhere, but, you know, you can't catch it in this weird way.

I love those kind of moments where you know you can hear it, but it's also like so subtle that it feels like a secret or something. It kind of feels like the devil's speaking to you through a song. or something, except it's about you being depressed. That feeling when you're alone and just like wallowing and you can't really like help yourself, it just feels like damp and dark and it just feels like musty. And I think there's a mold in my brain spreading down all the way through my heart and my body. And then I wanted to kind of bring in another issue where it's like I want to be stronger for everyone that's around me that I care about and that has to watch me go through this.

I'm trying to seem strong for my love for my family and friends, but I'm so tired of faking. I think that's a huge part of what, you know, it's about is that you're in this, like, kind of in. insufferable sadness that you don't want to plague other people with. And a lot of other people are dealing with it. Like, it's the same thing. But it's like this weird thing where kind of no one can help save each other. It's a very solitary experience and journey to get onto the other side of that when I wrote the song. I was in it, but I was getting out.

And part of what was helping me out of it was the inspiration to write. Being inspired by something is really helpful. Like I'm just like taking a deep breath and just kind of letting it out. It just feels like peace. Now here's Circle the Drain by Soccer Mommy in its entirety. Visit SongExploder.net to learn more about Soccer Mommy. You'll also find a link to stream or buy the song Circle the Drain. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24.

It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Robe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuckus, Josh Molina, Minjin,

Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. Song Exploder is made by me and producer Christian Coons with production assistants from Olivia Wood and illustrations by Carlos Lerma.

Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of independent creative podcasts. Learn more about all of our shows at Radiotopia.fm. You can find Song Exploder on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at Song Exploder. My name is Rishi Kesh Hirwe. Thanks for listening. Radiotopia.