Album Review: Indigo De Souza Opens the Floodgates of Emotion on Her Third Studio Album ‘All of This Will End’

Indigo De Souza is an artist known for her anguished indie-rock sound and blunt lyrics. Accepting the terms and conditions of life, De Souza laments about frustrations and beginnings on her new album, All of This Will End.

Written By Rachel Joy Thomas

Indigo De Souza is an alternative indie artist who embodies the taboo concepts of death, pain, sex and the struggles of love in her records with forthright, vulgar lyricism tied with strings of self-acceptance amongst personal doubts. While she's most known for her nostalgia-inducing songs "Boys" and "Kill Me," she has made countless tracks filled with different levels of hopelessness, varying musical experimentation, and a garage rock sound that combines raspy vocals with rock fuzz and electropop to create a genuine emotional experience for listeners. Almost all of her music walks listeners through trying attempts of overcoming adverse moments, and her most recent album, All of This Will End, is no exception.

With a new level of self-acceptance, All of This Will End combines optimism, joy, and a love of the natural world with different levels of anguish. De Souza creates an interwinding experience that differentiates the album from her other projects. While still very similar to the rest of her discography in regards to lyricism and sound, the 25-year-old musician slightly branches out on All of This Will End with different instrumentals and fuller layers of sound. The music on this alternative-heavy album feels more collected than her previous records, embodying a more composed reverberation that harmoniously blends electro-pop, indie-rock, and Americana.

The album opens with a happy, danceable groove. Subtle and airy, “Time Back” sways the audience into listening with a light touch, twisting into a beautiful, electronic blare. Halfway through, the song transitions into an experimental, ambient energy filled with an enigmatic presence. De Souza laments, "I'm sad / I'm tired / I want my time back" in a straightforward, dejected tone similar to songs like "Kill Me" from her sophomore album, Any Shape You Take. "Time Back" shows off both sides of the album, establishing the tired, gloomy tone and the tangling, bright melodies that fill the project with a sense of tragic nostalgia. The indie artist interjects the melancholy nature of this album with what feels like occasional glimpses into happier memories, self-revitalization, and eventual levels of acceptance with the loss of friends and previous partners.

Contrasting this, De Souza returns to her indie-rock roots on the very next song, "You Can Be Mean." De Souza's simple, forthright vocals work exceptionally well on this track, featuring the haunting lyrics: "I can't believe I let you touch my body / I can't believe I let you get inside / You know what you did / You know what you took from me." The lyrics deal with heavy themes of abuse with sheer honesty and frankness. De Souza exposes her devastation in response to the grave theft of her intimacy, expressing a heartbreaking desire for normalcy among looming trauma. De Souza's "You Can Be Mean" carries punching honesty toward an abuser. The rock-forward sound of the song works well with its angry, anguished messaging and makes it one of the best songs on the album.

A track about losing friends as they move away in the summer months, "Losing" is much lighter than the album’s more rock-forward counterparts. Its airy sound struggles to find its footing among the heavier rock and synth tracks, especially when placed between the powerful songs "You Can Be Mean" and "Wasting Your Time." The simplicity of De Souza's vocals works well on tracks where the chorus's repetitive nature elevates the song's emotional stakes. Songs like "You Can Be Mean" are improved by this as it adds to the lamenting, grave tone of the song. "Losing," however, can suffer due to a lack of differentiation or vocal experimentation that improves other songs on the album. The simplicity of lyrics like, “There is nothing I can do / when the winds of change blow through,” offer a sort of teenage nostalgia but can feel too blunt, even though this is often a positive aspect of De Souza’s overall discography.

This trait of overwhelming bluntness follows on "Wasting Your Time," which has a punchy, rock-heavy sound. “Wasting Your Time” incorporates more of a fuzzy, melancholic sound, with a chorus that repeats “Wasting your time.” Because this song feels more mournful than “Losing,” it does feel a little more fitting to feature heavy repetition in the lyrics and subject matter. The repetition feels more attune to continuous nagging thoughts, alongside jarring pauses in the instrumentation. While the simplicity of the lyrics feels more fitting here, it still feels a little lackluster in comparison to more heavy-handed tracks like “You Can Be Mean” and “All of This Will End.”

Following "Wasting Your Time" is the more indie pop "Parking Lot," with the languishing lyrics, "But it's probably just hard to be a person feeling anything / I'm back again / I've gotta eat somehow." Breathy vocals make De Souza sound exasperated, which platforms the powerfully poignant lyrics. The lyrics lament the difficulty of day-to-day living, with De Souza expressing a struggle to function in basic, human settings. The song sounds off quickly, lyrics twisting and enjambing themselves into one another to give the tone of a rash, rapid struggle to get through the day.

Notable lyrics on the title-track song, “All of This Will End,” follow similar themes. "I'm out of the body, I am idle in the kitchen, biting on my fingernails / Keeping from calling, feeling scared of everyone I thought I knew," De Souza cries. “All of This Will End” is a powerful, nostalgic song with a blissful hum and subtle, beautiful lyricism. Powerful lines like “Nobody hears me now / I’m talking to myself / I’m talking to god or something,” give a unknowing, lackadaisical tone to a song filled with a certain grittiness along with somewhat playful lyrics. The song reflects on a loss of community and sense of anxiety that comes from reaching out to people who feel far away.

"Not My Body" is the first track on the album to feature a beautiful, twangy country guitar alongside the typical rock sound. It also has a heavy Americana rock guitar solo between its lyrics: "I just want to be like you / So sure of what to do / so high." It features wavy, operatic vocals and peculiar, experimental ambient mixing, making it unique among the rest of De Souza's discography. While the song starts very minimalistically, it builds into a large, foreboding sound.

Ending the album, "Younger & Dumber," keeps the twangy guitar of "Not My Body" while De Souza's enrapturing vocals create a gospel-style ambiance. De Souza's vocal performance shines while she painfully sings, "And the love I feel is so very real / it will drag you down." She holds her notes out until her voice eventually fades away along with the soft plucks of an acoustic guitar. After this is a beautiful, transcendent buildup as she belts, "Which way will I run when I'm over you / I don't feel at home in this town.” “Younger & Dumber,” in combination with other songs on the album, feels like a eulogy for a younger, more naive person. De Souza sings the verse “When I was younger / younger and prouder / I was nobody / you came to hurt me in all the right places,” indicating a certain sense of loss for a more confident but ‘dumber’ version of herself. While she powerfully calls out her own ability to love in the song, it feels like a more mature version of herself calling out to a younger person who didn’t know how to understand that love in the first place. Understanding her love for others after the fact, she sings “And the love I feel is so very real / it’ll drag you down, oh, oh.” But, a younger and dumber version of herself didn’t know better than to love. De Souza concludes the song with “When I was younger / younger and dumber / I didn’t know better,” emphasizing the memory of this tragic experience in knowing another person.

The listening experience of this album, as a whole, improves on creating a cohesive vision. When listening to this album, you can feel De Souza’s emotional state during its creation. It truly feels like a glimpse into the life of a growing artist who experienced different struggles, anxieties, and pressures. All of This Will End improves upon the lyricism and experimentation of De Souza’s previous albums like I Love My Mom and Any Shape You Take by adding more operatic, ambient and country influences to her core indie-rock sound and focusing on life experiences in a more complex way. Complexity in this album comes from the cohesion of all of the instrumentation and elements, which create a clear emotional picture for the listener. The blend of electronic influences, powerful vocals, vulnerable lyrics, and garage-rock influences make All of This Will End remarkably unique, in the way that a De Souza album feels naturally separate than other indie-rock records while still maintaining core alternativism.

Overall, the only caveat to the experience of All of This Will End is that the lyrics are excessively blunt, lacking depth in their choruses or a range of diverse storytelling. When listening, it feels like there is a deepness that is missing to some songs that could use a bigger kick in their lyrics. Some songs feel more outwardly powerful than others, making some more repeatable for future listening. The album, however, still has multiple, hard-hitting tracks that feel punchy, dynamic, and strong in their own right. It makes use of wonderful instrumentation and the raspy sound of De Souza’s voice in a wonderful, explorative way that tentatively steps into a new positive light. The healing that De Souza has grown from shapes this album alongside memories of anguish that feel fresh and empowering. The floodgates of emotion are truly opened on this wonderful addition to De Souza’s discography.