Indigo De Souza – All of This Will End | Album Review
/
Saddle Creek
I’ll start this with a little bit of context- I was not planning on being single for the last year of my 20s, having a four-and-a-half-year relationship end with a whimper in the dirty parking lot of my favorite Thai restaurant. Further context: I had never been on a dating app before this year, even during my undergrad when they started to pop up and capture the dating zeitgeist. I’ve heard horror stories, of course- strange sex in public parks (not sure how that’s even possible?), reserving a table for two only to awkwardly leave the restaurant or dine alone in silence. I also vaguely remember one of my college classmates telling me they got mugged and that the person they matched with didn’t even exist? But regardless of these objectively unpleasant experiences, I decided, against my better judgment, to download a couple of dating apps and sell myself in the name of love.
Dating is no simple task, and dating on the eve of your 30s is even more difficult. Dating on the eve of your 30s in the age of Tinder and Bumble is a fool’s errand, the ultimate task of God’s Romantic Jester. Tech-Bros have ushered romance into the Gig Era, offering potential partners in a shiny mobile app that is somewhat similar to a mobile gacha game- with microtransactions to boot. Here I sit on my couch, cracked iPhone in-hand, swiping left or right on people based on very little information that I read less than 5 seconds ago. And to make matters even more absurd, people are doing the exact same thing to me when I pop up on their screens! But I’ve found beautiful things in strange circumstances, so on and on I swipe into the wee small hours of the early morning.
After a week or so of swiping, matching, texting, ghosting (ghoster and ghostee), boosting, and more, the acrid stench of doubt starts to materialize across my subconscious. And how couldn’t it? I’m just a dude, being exposed to more people than my great-grandpa met in his entire lifetime within the span of an hour- and I hadn’t even gone on an actual date yet. I start to take note of others’ profiles, making small tweaks to mine so that the almighty first impression lands smoothly. At some point, it starts to feel like the Terms of Service was a job application in disguise- except the end goal is intimacy and not employment. My sense of self begins to intertwine with my Dating App Self, the unattainable farce of perfection always tantalizingly just beyond my fingertips. Is showcasing my authentic self possible in such a small space that has been programmed by Silicon Valley to be consumed in passing?
The struggle of living an authentic, loving life is explored by singer-songwriter Indigo De Souza throughout her discography, and her latest, All of This Will End, is no exception. However, it’s hard to ignore the feeling that the angle of the struggle has shifted from her previous offerings into a more grounded state of acceptance. The painting that graces the cover of All of This Will End features the same mother-daughter characters (beautifully painted by Indigo’s own mother) that have become a sort of trademark for Souza’s work. Here, they find themselves at the scene of car trouble, the mother holding her phone towards the heavens and the daughter sitting up against the busted vehicle with an air of resignation. Not an ideal situation by any means- but the painting breathes acceptance of it all, from the characters themselves to the warm colors of the desert that they have become temporarily entrapped in. They are Here, and This is Happening.
Of course, being a person is a messy affair, filled with moments of excruciating pain and biblical euphoria. We like to paint those transitory moments of joy as characteristic of who we are as a person; small moments stretched so far that they lose their ephemerality and become another reason to swipe left. But Indigo de Souza knows that these moments, while important, are not the sole ingredient in the creation of ourselves. Her pen emulates a razor, eviscerating the everyday with jarring transparency and letting the undercurrent flow free, no matter how ugly it may seem. “Parking Lot” deals heavily with agoraphobia brought upon by anxiety, turning a grocery store into an overstimulating but necessary evil since she’s “gotta eat somehow.” “Always” is a cacophonous question to Indigo’s father, wondering how much his words were worth in the loud silence of his absence. “Losing” is a heart-wrenching piece that wrestles with the ups-and-downs of mental health amid interpersonal relationships in perpetual flux.
What makes Indigo’s lyrical prowess all the more lovely is her exceptional ability to write grungy, poppy gems that smoothly float across genres in a way that could only be described as “natural.” Perhaps even more impressive is how deftly she respcts the audience’s time. Glancing over All of This Will End’s A-side reveals a series of tracks that begrudgingly go past the two-minute mark (title track “All of This Will End” clocks in at 2:59, but I respect the hustle), yet none of these songs feel like half-baked ideas or throwaway tracks designed to pad the Spotify stats. In fact, I would say I wouldn’t even mind if some of these tracks were longer. Heavy-hitting “Wasting Your Time” has a gorgeous, breezy chorus that is the perfect response to the thick chords of the verses- but we are only graced with it once before the song’s end (perhaps, its rarity makes it all the more beautiful). “Parking Lot” ends with the poignant observation: “Maybe I’ll just always be a little bit sad,” before coming to a sudden end. But really- what else does Indigo need to say? You can almost feel the shrug of acceptance as she sings it: She is Here, and This is Happening.
Side-B of All of This Will End continues to showcase Indigo’s songwriting talents as the pace cools down a bit and the songs grow a little longer in length, the lyrics a little more surreal. The music also starts to branch out even further, flirting with dance music on “Smog” and “The Water,” followed by a small affair with alt-country on closers “Not My Body” and “Younger and Dumber.” Indigo continues to dig deep into herself lyrically, reckoning with the past, the present, and the future. “The Water” finds herself in the river of time as she fondly expresses her love for the water that lets her relive the memories of her younger self. Closing track, “Younger and Dumber,” is a beautiful ballad of accepting the naivety of youth while questioning the uncertainty of the future- and exploding into a declaration of a love so strong that it seems to exert its own force. Admiringly, Indigo extracts gratitude from all of her experiences, side-stepping the human tendency to sift through our experiences for any opportunity to blame whatever we feel has wronged us. A well-spring of hope bubbles up from within her, turning the crushing weight of existence into a force of creation rather than destruction.
-
I’m sitting outside a cafe, sipping a black coffee with a CBD joint (a hippy-speedball, but for people with an anxiety disorder). I let my mind wander as I exhale a thick cloud of smoke, thoughts coming and going with the traffic of the busy street by my side. I aimlessly swipe away on Bumble, the app sending me “encouraging” automated messages while simultaneously reminding me to use the Superswipes that I got with my (sigh) premium subscription. Fifteen minutes zip by, my joint burned to a roach, my leftover coffee a cold puddle of mud at the bottom of the paper cup. I put my phone down and look around at the life happening around me. It's a beautiful, sunny spring day, freshly washed after a long week of rain. Suddenly, my phone lights up with a notification from Bumble- instead of the scheduled automated message, it’s telling me I’ve got a match. I am Here, and This is Happening.
Nickolas is an artist based in Southern California. Described by a beloved elementary teacher as an “absolute pleasure to have in class,” his work wrestles with the conflict between privacy and self-expression in the digital age. You can find him shitposting on Twitter @DjQuicknut and on Instagram @sopranos_on_dvd_.
