Soccer Mommy • Hana Vu • March 8, 2025 • The Depot
Reviewed and Photographed by Amelia Weyerstall
A flower-filled stage of the Depot welcomed Soccer Mommy and Hana Vu to an incredible crowd of fans in SLC.
“Soccer Mommy – the musical project of beloved Nashville songwriter and musician Sophie Allison – began her career as a teenager, sharing music on Bandcamp in near-demo form. Recent years have found her enjoying synthesizers and experimental production, thanks to endless studio resources newly at her fingertips.”
Hana Vu
Lit up by bright primary-colored lights, Hana Vu took the stage by storm with her deep vocals and powerful lyrics. The bridges of her songs brought out all the emotions of the crowd and had them swaying back and forth her entire set. The lyrics and vocals weren’t the only incredible things about the opening act. Hana Vu took a moment to show appreciation to her band: Jacob on guitar, Graham on drums, and Shawn on bass.
Throughout her set, the crowd was shouting how cool Hana Vu was, along with showing lots of love through many rounds of applause.
Vu might be from LA, but her ties to Utah run deep. She said, “It’s cool to be in Utah, my parents are from here… so go Utes!” This got the crowd very excited, cheering for their local university. The songs certainly didn’t disappoint; Vu was a great opener for Soccer Mommy.
Hana Vu left the stage with heart hands in the air and an eruption of applause from the audience, keeping the vibes high for Soccer Mommy’s performance.
Soccer Mommy
Before the actual performance, Soccer Mommy came out onto the stage very early to start tuning her guitars, the crowd compacted forward, and excited shouting could be heard bouncing around the venue. The early setup got the crowd super excited for the performance to come.
“Hi, I’m Sophie, nice to meet you guys, you can call me Soccer Mommy too.” The stage was filled with flowers, on every amp, guitar stand, and on the front of the stage. The lighting for the whole performance was very magical, with pink and almost glittery lights spinning around like a disco ball. There were super cool and interesting, almost surreal images and graphics projected onto a large ring of even more flowers on the back wall of the stage. It was a dramatic visual effect that added another dimension to the whole performance.
Soccer Mommy, aka Sophie Allison, is no stranger to the spotlight; she has played at Coachella and was an opener for Paramore. Her latest album, “Evergreen,” was released in 2024, and she just released the new single, “Driver (stripped)”. They were definitely a big hit with the audience when the songs were played during the show.
Before playing the song “Feel It All the Time,” Allison said, “This next one we are going to play is about my truck, which I don’t have anymore because it died on me.” The audience then asked what kind of truck it was, and Allison replied with, “It was a Ford Ranger… what kind of truck could I have said that wouldn’t have gotten that reaction… a Cybertruck??? which isn’t really a truck.” This made the audience laugh and cheer. Soccer Mommy had the whole audience dancing, singing along, and had their hands in the air all night long.
A bit later in between songs a fan in the front of the crowd shouted that their name was Henry, and that Soccer Mommy should play the song, “Henry” To which Allison replied by saying how it’s not on the setlist, but whenever it is on the setlist for a concert that she’ll ask if anyone in the audience is named Henry and it turns out that no one ever is. The crowd started to chant for her to change the setlist and play “Henry” but Allison said “Next time, Next time” It may have slightly disappointed the fans for a minute, but then they realized that she would come back to Utah to play another show and have something to look forward to for the future.
Soccer Mommy’s backing band was also extremely talented: Rodrigo Avendano on Keys and Guitars, Nick Widener on bass, Rollum Haas on drums, and Julian Powell on guitar. All of them gave the audience a groovy indie beat to dance along to. The band helped the songs flow beautifully together and brought even more energy to the lively performance from Soccer Mommy.
Allison also took a moment to thank her opening act, “Why don’t we take a sec here to give a big round of applause for Hana Vu! They are amazing, and we are really happy to have them on this tour with us. They also have merch downstairs, and it’s really cool merch. I myself have a sweatshirt… so if you get one, we can match.” This was a super sweet way to help promote their opening act and show their appreciation for Hana Vu.
A few songs and rounds of applause later, Allison said how she’s excited to play the next song, “Lost”, with only Julian and Rodrigo. This was such a nice and cozy moment between the three musicians. ”Lost“ was immediately followed up by “Still Clean,” which Allison played alone on the stage. It created a very intimate moment between the audience and singer, and the audience was so quiet listening to the music that it sounded like they weren’t even there.
The last song before the encore was “Your Dog,” which was definitely a fan favorite of the night, everyone was jumping, dancing, and singing their hearts out to the song. When Soccer Mommy left the stage, the crowd erupted into applause and didn’t stop, shouting and clapping until Allison came back onto the stage. When she came back, she said, “Hi again. What are you guys still doing here? Just hanging out? I mean, since you are all still here, we could play a couple more songs.” Soccer Mommy played their two-song encore of “Changes” and “Don’t Ask Me” before finishing off the night by saying, “Thank you so much, SLC! We will see you next time,” which closed out the night with another huge round of applause.
