FEATURE: Spotlight: Indigo De Souza

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Indigo De Souza

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I did say…

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlie Boss

I was going to come on to bands when it came to Spotlight. That said, there is an artist I have overlooked that I have been aware of for a while. The brilliant Indigo De Souza was raised in North Carolina, and her music is a blend of Indie and Rock. In terms of new material this year, things have been a little quiet. I wanted to look back at her extraordinary album from last year, Any Shape You Take, as we are going to hear more from this amazing talent very soon. Before coming to her sophomore album (her debut, I Love My Mom, was released in 2018), there are some interviews that I want to bring together. The Line of Best Fit spoke to De Souza back in September last year about her upbringing, music and plans:

“She grew up in Spruce Pine, a very small conservative town in the middle of the North Carolina mountains. Her family had considered moving to the bigger city of Asheville but it proved to be too expensive at the time, leading them to choose a town that was close to it. “Spruce Pine just happened to be very different from Asheville in the end,” De Souza laughs. As one of the very few mixed race students, she suffered from bullying; feeling like an outcast. Her family unit – her father, a Brazilian bossa nova guitarist, her mother, an eccentric but passionate creative artist – didn’t fit the typical Spruce Pine mould. Music and songwriting, then, were her way out of her shyness. “Music definitely helped,” she tells me. “I would probably be in a very different position if I didn’t have music to give me some sort of tool to connect with people through.”

De Souza would eventually land in Asheville, moving there at the age of 16. “My grandfather had moved in with us about a year before I moved to Asheville,” she recalls. “It kind of became tense in the house because I was so young and didn’t understand the violence and confusion that comes with dementia. My mum felt like I needed to go somewhere else because I needed to be free of that tension and I also just wasn’t having a good time in Spruce Pine. She knew that I needed a broader music community to experience as well, so I moved out of my mom’s house and into a house with my sister, who was I think 24 at the time, in Asheville.”

After lacking love and compassion in Spruce Pine, she endeavoured to find it for herself in Asheville. She soon found herself in the music community she had been craving for so long. “It’s a really beautiful music community though with so many talented people. There’s a lot of people under the surface who only play places in the original Asheville scene. It’s been changed a lot by tourism and development. So the original Asheville people hang out in the original places.” It’s also why, when I ask if she sees herself moving up in the world again, perhaps to a music hub such as New York City, she’s immediate with her answer. “No. I had wanted to before the pandemic but not anymore. After the pandemic, I moved out to the woods and now I have such a giant community here. There’s no reason to leave, I love all the people here. I love the landscape, the river, the trees. It’s a really good climate here too, even in summertime it’s not super heavy. I love it here.”

During this time, De Souza released her debut album, I Love My Mom, in 2018 and it’s decidedly DIY, winsomely ramshackled and raw. She went through several life changes in the following few years – relationships coming and going, indulging moments of existential crises and even signing with Saddle Creek. The move to that label afforded De Souza access to luxuries that she could never have previously imagined. “I Love My Mom was recorded in more of a bedroom situation,” she says. “We didn’t have a lot of resources and I didn’t know a lot about recording back then. So a lot has changed. This album is much more hi-fi in general and there’s so many fun synths and instruments on it. I’m grateful for that and for being able to go to the total opposite end of the spectrum in a recording sense.” But she maintains that the DIY energy is still present though: “I think that next time I’ll want to take more elements from the DIY side into the album and kind of split the difference. Using all that fancy stuff brings with it a lot of pressure!”

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlie Boss

Mostly raised by her mother, the continuing bond between mother and daughter is never more striking than on both of De Souza’s album covers: her mum designed the artwork for both I Love My Mom and Any Shape You Take; an endearing mix of their creative passions. “Both of the [album covers] were visions that came to me in a moment and I knew that those were the images I wanted,” she reveals. “I explained the imagery to my mom and she then painted it from what she could understand. I asked her to paint an apocalyptic grocery store aisle before the pandemic even happened! Then once I saw the pandemic I realised that I’d told the future,” she laughs.

When the pandemic did come along, bringing a time of struggle for most, De Souza luckily managed to create positivity in her life. “I became aware of a really beautiful community of people,” she remembers, smiling warmly. “I also had a hand in building a really wonderful community too. I moved into this church building during the pandemic,” she laughs, beckoning to the huge arched windows behind her that had perplexed me at the start of our interview. “It’s this huge church and I just live here with one other person. We’ve made it a safe place for artists and people to gather. Before I was never really in one place long enough to have a really grounded community.”

Her mental health improved during this time too, in no small part to the new community place she had honed. “The pandemic gave me a lot of patience for life,” she reflects. “Everything slowed down. The music industry slowed down, my relationships with people slowed down. Everything was in slow motion. So I think I gained a lot of patience and awareness of the way I was living my life and the energy I was giving to things. That break from the fast pace of the world was very helpful. I feel much better calibrated.”

Many of her songs reflect the care and compassion that has bound De Souza with her community. The middle part of “Real Pain” features the voices of De Souza’s fans stacked with hers after she asked them to send in audio clips of them screaming. “The idea just came to me. It felt poignant because of the way we were all experiencing collective pain and fear. It was so palpable this feeling that the whole world was experiencing something similar and that people could relate to each other for the first time. There was a really common denominator. That idea really inspired me, mostly because I barely relate to people in the world ever. I wanted to give people a space to scream and yell and let out all their frustration and anger. I just wanted to connect with my audience and give them that moment in a song”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlie Boss

I am going to move on to a great interview from “Fifteen” Questions. As their name suggests, they ask their subjects fifteen questions. One of the most interesting questions posed is how Indigo De Souza’s sense of identity affects and influences her creativity:

“For most artists, originality is preceded by a phase of learning and, often, emulating others. What was this like for you: How would you describe your own development as an artist and the transition towards your own voice?

I wrote songs in a more traditionally structured way when I first started playing. I remember learning standard folk songs from my guitar teacher and modeling my own songs after those structures. My thinking about songs and lyrics changed drastically when I was later introduced to underground rock and indie music.

I was also heavily influenced a very special artist friend in my life who taught me that there are no limits to the ways in which I can write. I am allowed to explore anything that feels true. There is no structure.

How do you feel your sense of identity influences your creativity? What were your main creative challenges in the beginning and how have they changed over time?

I don’t know that I am ever really dwelling in my sense of identity very much, though I’m sure it has some kind of influence.

When I wrote I love my mom I actually think I barely had an identity at all because I had almost completely disappeared into a very heavy and turbulent relationship. I guess that’s kind of classic though --- writing from a place of deep pain. Pain is very inspirational!

I don’t really know if I’ve had many creative challenges though. Maybe just that sometimes I don’t write for a while, and that can feel scary. But it always comes back, so I just try not to pressure myself or feel down about that.

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? What supports this ideal state of mind and what are distractions? Are there strategies to enter into this state more easily?

I think my ideal state of mind for writing is usually just a very raw place of emotion that is coming directly from my heart. I can never really choose when I enter that space, but it helps to listen to my own voice in headphones and to just kind of zone out with some droning keyboard sounds.

I also make a lot of voice memos in my phone throughout the day. Sometimes I will enter a creative space when I listen back to those and have time to really sit with them.

Music and sounds can heal, but they can also hurt. Do you personally have experiences with either or both of these? Where do you personally see the biggest need and potential for music as a tool for healing?

Music has absolutely been a source of healing for me! Even just tracing back to my youth when I was bullied a lot in school and felt very alienated. Music gives people a safe space to express anything and feel anything without being judged. It also allows for people to feel closer to themselves and their experiences.

I am very grateful to have the chance to play music as a career. It has always been the only thing that really makes sense to me”.

If you do not have De Souza’s Any Shape You Take, then go and order a copy. She is a phenomenal artist who I cannot wait to see where she goes next. LADYGUNN spoke with the North Carolina-born artist about her new album. It is curious to feel and hear the changes between Any Shape You Take and her debut, I Love My Mom:

“CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR ALBUM! I’D LOVE TO START BY TALKING A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR LAST ALBUM IN RELATION TO THIS ONE. WHAT WERE THE DIFFERENCES IN THE PROCESS BETWEEN CREATING AND RELEASING I LOVE MY MOM COMPARED TO ANY SHAPE YOU TAKE?

It was very different because I Love My Mom was a DIY, bedroom-living room recording, and this new album was much broader within its resources. There were many more people working on this album than the last and just really everything changed. When I made I Love My Mom I had just started playing with a band, so that was new to me. Everything was new and the recordings just kind of happened very naturally and it was before we’d even gone on one tour. Recording this album was very different because I’ve had so much more experience with music in general since then.

LISTENING THROUGH THE ALBUM I REALIZED THAT A LOT OF IT DEALS WITH GRIEF, DEATH AND MORTALITY. DO YOU THINK THAT BECAUSE WHEN SOMETHING CHANGES THERE’S OFTEN AN ENDING TO ONE THING SO THAT IT CAN BECOME A NEW THING, THAT CHANGE IS ALWAYS ACCOMPANIED BY SOME LEVEL OF GRIEF?

Totally, that’s exactly it. It feels like this constant grief and loss and pain because change carries those things and those things are kind of the greatest teacher. I think for a while that was the part that I didn’t understand. I just wanted to be angry that I was feeling so much pain and I wanted to go against that change. Then I realized that you could actually learn something from it and move through it. If I were to feel all of the pain and grief and actually learn from it, then I will be changed for the better. Then I can move through things quicker if I actually accept the pain that I’m feeling.

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlie Boss

SO I KNOW THAT YOUR MOM HAS CREATED BOTH OF YOUR ALBUM COVERS. IF YOU’RE COMFORTABLE I’D LOVE TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR MOTHER AND HOW IT INFORMS YOUR MUSIC, IF AT ALL.

It’s funny people ask this question about her and my music being related in some way because I called the album I Love My Mom and she painted the paintings. But I think my songs are much more about my friends, my romantic relationships and my relationship to myself. But she has kind of been this symbol of mortality in my songwriting because she is one of the things that kind of triggered this series of realizations when I was in my teens. I guess you would call them existential crises. I kind of came to the idea that we’re actually dying and although I’ve known that my whole life, there were a few moments where it actually clicked that we were dying. That my mom was dying, that everyone I loved would die, and the people that they loved would die. That we would all kind of live in this space where things were beautiful and joy was able to be had, but then we would lose each other in a very real and kind of final way. It was one the most important realizations I’ve ever had because it offered me this new space to be very present in my life and to see people with much more compassion than I’d ever seen them with before. So I think that’s why there’s so much symbolism with my mom because she is one of the things that triggered that. And then also she’s just really, really beautiful. She’s just a really wonderful artist. She has hundreds of paintings, which I’m trying to get her to start an Instagram for because nobody can see her artwork anywhere other than my album covers. She sculpts things and builds things and has always been a very vibrant and colorful person. It’s always been very inspiring, at times embarrassing when I was young, but now fully inspiring (laughter)”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Kara Perry for Pitchfork

Before coming to a review of Any Shape You Take, Pitchfork interviewed one of the most promising and fascinating rising artists. I have known about Indigo De Souza for a little while, but I have been struck ever since. She definitely stands out in a sea of talented songwriters. The more you delve and dive into Any Shape You Take, the more you get from it and the more you learn about De Souza:

“Pitchfork: Your music is extremely earnest and never uses irony as a shield. “Die/Cry,” for example, is built around the straightforward mantra, “I’d rather die than see you cry.” Do you ever have second thoughts about being so unguarded?

Indigo De Souza: I’ve always wanted to share exactly what I’m feeling all the time, I guess it’s just the way I was born into the world. I sometimes have to be like, “OK, stop telling everyone how you’re feeling.” I find freedom in people knowing what I’m feeling, so there’s no mystery. From a young age, I found that if I really put it all out there in my songwriting, people will find something to relate to. That became a really special ability, because I noticed how it brought people together in this bubble of feeling.

One of the most striking moments on the new album is the chorus of crowdsourced screams on “Real Pain.” Why did you decide to include that in the song?

I initially asked for people’s voices when I was recording demos before the pandemic, because I wanted to embody collective pain. Then I asked again during the pandemic, and it took on a new meaning. I wanted to give people the opportunity to express whatever they were feeling at that time. I received a lot of very dark recordings that were very heavy to listen to, but also some lighter ones from people that were just excited to send something. Some in New York City sent me a little passage about how they felt like they couldn’t scream in their apartment and needed to find some place at a park. Nobody else that was recording with me knew the individual screams like I did. That section of the song is a representation of the idea that, no matter how separate our brains are, we all experience pain in such immense ways throughout our lives, and how that connects us.

Based on your experiences so far, what would you like to see change about the music industry?

Mark [Capon], who co-owns the store Harvest Records in Asheville, introduced me to the idea of having a music lawyer who could help me understand the things that I was being offered by labels. If I hadn’t had that, I would have gone with the first thing I was offered because I thought it was cool. I’ve had artist friends who were taken advantage of, who didn’t know what certain words or ideas within contracts mean. When music is your whole life, it becomes very emotionally involved. Sometimes it seems like the music industry doesn’t think about the people who are making the art that then makes money for everyone involved. If that person isn’t supported emotionally, they won’t be able to produce. I would like to see the music industry become more human”.

I am going to wrap things up with a review from The Line of Best Fit. They were definitely mesmerised and impacted by Indigo De Souza’s remarkable second studio album. It is certainly one of the best albums from last year. De Souza’s fanbase is growing, and there is a sense that she will keep growing bigger and stronger:

“De Souza’s directness comes as no shock. Her debut, I Love My Mom, was a resolutely honest record with little time for riddles, aiming instead to translate De Souza’s experience with vivid clarity. Given she has described Any Shape You Take as a “companion piece”, it’s unsurprising that the new record continues along a similar track, with songs often sounding more like diary entries than edited works. “Kill Me”, for example, was initially recorded as a stream-of-consciousness on De Souza’s webcam back in 2018, testament to the unfiltered relationship between her life and her art. To listen to her music is to first and foremost feel. When De Souza sings “I’d rather die than see you cry” on the garage-rock “Die/Cry”, there’s no second-guessing her intent. Her love is so encompassing it becomes sacrificial, nothing more, nothing less.

As is alluded to by the record’s title, De Souza’s confessional lyrics are paired with a shifting and restless sound on Any Shape You Take. In a divergence from the indie-punk of I Love My Mom, De Souza feels no obligation to abide by, well, anything, fearlessly leading her musical troupe down numerous unexpected avenues, with the sole intention of eliciting as much raw emotion as possible. Exploring the crushing, haunting helplessness of nightmares and insomnia? Easy, opt for a dense stoner riff and gothic vocal performance, as on “Bad Dreams”. However, if you’re wanting to communicate the sweet obsession of teenage love, look to the sort of saccharine indie-pop Hellogoodbye and Owl City deployed, which is exactly what De Souza does on opener “17”. She has commended her team for following her to what may appear unnatural ends, but the ambition sits solely with De Souza. Her dissolution of restrictions is inspired and inspiring, not a random amalgamation of sounds, but a pure expression of the experience.

For much of Any Shape You Take, that experience is one of love. Not the love of cute dates and effortless commitment, but the kind that rewires your entire life, a messy collision of extremes that is dependent on a blind commitment to its necessity. “Way Out” straddles the desperation and frustration of being unable to save someone you love, with the immovable want to believe that you still can. “Pretty Pictures” is similarly conflicted, as De Souza accepts the ending of a relationship is in her best interest, yet struggles with what makes sense versus what feels right as she laments “it’s so hard to give it up”. These kinds of paradoxes appear throughout the record, finding their most abrasive form on “Real Pain”. Following a burgeoning intro, in which De Souza contemplates the loss of love over a simple guitar/drums backing, the track devolves into a maelstrom of screams, yells and static, before closing in soaring indie fashion. Redolent of the unease and the unknown inherent in, and occasionally defining, relationships, in particular breakups, “Real Pain” is De Souza most realised, as experience and performance become intrinsically linked.

Any Shape You Take is a record about heartbreak and despair. But it’s also more than that. It encompasses the extremes of human emotion, as De Souza shoots back and forth across the divide like a pendulum in full swing. The tender adoration of “Hold U”, on which she heavily channels HAIM’s smooth optimism, is a mere gear change away from the resignation at the start of “Way Out”. In De Souza’s eyes, they’re all connected, if at opposite ends of the board. Any Shape You Take attempts to connect the dots, unafraid of expressing the depths nor the heights of a life lived with supreme sensitivity. As she sees it, if we're to empathise, we need to go there with her; to know what she knows, first we have to feel what she feels”.

Go and follow Indigo De Souza, as she is someone whose music instantly resonates. I wonder whether she has a new E.P. or album in the back of her mind. With a few tour dates mapped out for next year, I wonder whether we might see De Souza in the U.K. Following the release of Any Shape You Take, her fanbase has swollen. More eyes have looked her way. There is no doubt in my mind that Indigo De Souza is a tremendous young artist…