Indigo De Souza bravely steps into a new light on All of This Will End

Her album art, made by her mother, is instantly recognizable; her voice has a telltale edge to it in every style; her songwriting, both lyrically and melodically, has matured since her 2016 debut but maintains a wide-eyed, buoyant tone. Her work has consistently delivered an impression of desperation thinly veiled by callousness, urgency and reprieve. These Janus twin sensations are essential to the experience of being alive in the twenty-first century but are rarely captured so perfectly in music. All of This Will End is an album to listen to while driving fast into the sunset, windows down, trying to make sense of the world.

Much of the record centres on Indigo’s unravelling and letting go of her experiences, like a 32-minute-long meditation exercise. The radical self-love she finds through this process is present and in evident evolution throughout the record: “And I’m not sure what is wrong with me / But it’s probably just hard to be a person feeling anything [...] I’m a growing girl / My ups and downs are natural.” Where her previous albums have ruminated on anxiety but offered no relief, All of This Will End shows De Souza finding–and choosing–genuine happiness in accepting uncertainty.

The writing conveys this transformation without feeling didactic or pretentious, a difficult thing to do in an age of hacks and routines and mantras that promise to cure you of your malaise. Where this album could easily fall into trope territory, it navigates to a more nuanced space of self-reflection and intentionality. In moments where De Souza turns her perceptive eye away from herself, it is often in prudent disappointment: “I’d like to think that you’ve got a good heart / and your dad was just an asshole growing up / but I don’t see you trying that hard to be better than he is” (“You Can Be Mean”). De Souza’s characteristic sardonicism is still present on this album, refreshingly applied to deserving subjects rather than herself.

The first single for All of This Will End was “Younger and Dumber”, the album’s closer and emotional linchpin. She screams, “And the love I feel is so very real / It’ll drag you down.” Here, we get a glimpse of the hysterical De Souza that wrote and sang “How I Get Myself Killed” and “Kill Me”, standouts from her previous records. Interestingly, the focus on mortality is present but transformed from All of This Will End; she sings on the title track, “There’s only love / there’s only moving through and trying your best / sometimes it’s not enough / who gives a fuck; all of this will end.” Even the album art, while remaining stylistically and thematically consistent, shifts into warmer tones, an expression of optimism. All of This Will End marks the beginning of a new era for Indigo De Souza as she bravely steps into a new light.