Indigo De Souza Blows Past the Precipice of Pop
The warping of De Souza’s ferocity threads through the beautiful on her fourth album, keeping it from drifting into placidity, stubbornly insisting on weirdness and individuality as a precondition of greatness.
Upon initial listen, Precipice, the new album from indie powerhouse Indigo De Souza, feels almost mannered. Any Shape You Take, her 2021 breakout, was a raw nerve of musicality, every song threatening to erupt into emotional violence and pitch-shattering vocal lacerations, as though she were cutting through pop music’s standard build-release-repeat by opening up a vein—all release, all the time. It was almost too cathartic. And while 2023’s All Of This Will End started to make inroads to a more overt pop direction (while also covering a more sonically diverse array of sounds and styles), the electronic drum beats and synthesizers came across like friendly overtures toward a groove-friendly palette, previously considered too slick to capture such jagged feelings. A greater balance of sweet with the sour, in other words.
And in making an even more decisive pivot towards accessible songwriting and pleasing melodies, the artist has entered what could now be reasonably considered a full-on pop phase. But unlike so many before her, who traded out distortion and raw production values for too-sunny synths and clean, commercial-ready smoothness—losing what made them distinctive in the process—De Souza has found the musical sweet spot between authenticity and accessibility. The songs on Precipice are less rough, to be sure; there are times her voice is so controlled and steady, you almost wonder if this is the same person who descended into literal shrieks on Any Shape You Take’s “Real Pain.” To wit: Opener “Be My Love” finds her delivering a classic romantic come-hither, before rising into falsetto in a series of notes so precise, she sounds like, well, a pop singer.
But then, before the second round of rapidly rising notes and the repeated mantra, “This is not the end, it’s not the end, it’s not the end” (a reprieve of the finality promised by the last album title?), you hear it: The little hitch in her voice, the grain of sandpaper shaving off otherwise typical precision at the end of a line, that reminds you you’re listening to someone who would rather set a song on fire than sacrifice emotional intensity on the altar of singing it “right.” De Souza never lets well enough alone, and that’s what has always made her music great. She knows standard-issue hitting-the-notes-and-beats perfection, the expected results, is boring; and her voice, always her greatest weapon, is there to rip apart such wannabe-pop-star blandishments.