SOCCER MOMMY / BROOKE BENTHAM | LIVE REVIEW
Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, Wed 12 Sept
Indie rock, some would have you believe, is dead. It isn’t. It’s not even sleeping. It’s in rude good health – and, as a recent New York Times article ventured, it’s largely female artists who are keeping the flame alive. Unlike all of those featured in that piece, Brooke Bentham isn’t American, hailing instead from South Shields via London, but she could hold her own in the company of any of her transatlantic cousins.
When Loud And Quiet branded her “the Angel (Olsen) of the North”, it might have seemed to the uninitiated a facile comparison, but within two minutes tonight she’s exceeded expectations, her languid guitar style and incredible voice – reverbed, timeless, world-weary, beyond her years – holding the entire room rapt. And the songs are sensational, compelling us to cling to every moment and word. Breakthrough track Losing, Baby, even without piano and skipping beats, is wonderful, and yet is eclipsed by both Perform For You and Heavy And Ephemeral. New single Out Of My Mind sees Bentham temporarily dispensing with the folk in favour of guitar fuzz to great effect, and indeed might be even better with her backing band behind her.
Together with Mitski and kindred spirit Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy aka Sophie Allison is a cornerstone of the NYT article’s case. The Nashville native draws on Best Coast in imbuing the indie rock idiom with the spirit of breezy pop while retaining a mellow, melancholic reflectiveness. She kicks off with a pair of older tracks, Henry and Try, before concentrating largely on material from debut LP proper Clean. The teen/twentysomething melodrama of Cool and Last Girl makes them feel tailormade for inclusion on the soundtrack for an indie flick made by someone who grew up on a diet of 80s teen movies. While the latter gives voice to feelings of insecurity and inadequacy within a relationship, Your Dog is the polar opposite, a forthright riposte to the Stooges’ classic in which Allison refuses to be controlled and mistreated.
The highlight comes when the rather reticent singer is left alone to perform her sumptuous cover of Bruce Springsteen’s I’m On Fire, which for my money trumps the original. Her bandmates – who look like a bunch of stoned arts students dragged out of a college dorm room and onto the stage – return for Scorpio Rising, finally finding themselves let off the leash, though only temporarily at the track’s climax. Allison comes back for a solo single-song encore and then they’re all gone. It feels as though it’s all over too quickly – but then they’ve probably left a pizza burning in the oven, and those episodes of Rick And Morty won’t watch themselves.
words BEN WOOLHEAD