Photo by Charlie Boss
Indigo De Souza’s sophomore album Any Shape You Take is a breakthrough release for the indie singer-songwriter, combining a wide array of stylistic touchpoints into a thrillingly vulnerable album that embraces the peaks and valleys of emotional storytelling with the unflinching candor of an artist staring directly into the camera.
At first blush it would be easy to place Any Shape You Take into the same group as recent releases from Olivia Rodrigo and Willow, emotive albums from young female artists that lean heavily into alt rock as a means of expression to feel fresh and exciting. Closer inspection reveals that while De Souza’s latest is certainly adjacent to lately I feel EVERYTHING and Sour, Any Shape You Take is actually quite different. Rodrigo has drawn criticism for her surface level emulation of a rock album, while Willow’s most recent is too experimental and obtuse to warrant neat classification. Any Shape You Take is truly and clearly rock music, reworked and updated for a modern audience in an authentic way that doesn’t make any compromises for mass appeal. In this way the album is by nature much closer to Alanis Morrisette’s 1995 bruiser Jagged Little Pill, a boldly feminine expression that’s tough and confident enough not just to play with the boys but to outperform them on nearly every level.
De Souza doesn’t necessarily break any new ground musically, but at this point in pop music history that doesn’t really matter. Like a collage artist carefully selecting and positioning clippings from magazines and newspapers to create a new message, De Souza’s intelligent curation allows for the measured mingling of eclectic sounds in a way that serves to provide an air of familiarity that doesn’t interfere with her poetry. Hints of The Postal Service’s emo-pop crop up on album opener “17” swirling amidst autotuned vocals and robotic harmonies a-la Låpsley that wouldn’t sound out of place in a TOKiMONSTA set. Further down the track list De Souza channels the soaring vocal theatrics and frayed guitar of The Cranberries on “Bad Dream,” a dry mechanical beat on “Pretty Pictures” that owes its genesis to Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer,” and even flirting with light, staccato funk that sounds like Haim juicing up a delicate Prince b-side on “Hold U.”
It would not be inaccurate to tag Any Shape You Take as an emo record in the sense that very little is held back when describing the kinds of unpredictable emotional extremes that dominate the youthful experience. While the term “emo” earned its near derogatory status in the 00s due to the pervasive entitled whining of suburban boys, De Souza’s modern approach to abject confessionalism doesn’t deflect blame or play the victim, instead pouring her heart onto the page in recognition and acceptance of her own shortcomings as a means of developing into a better person. There are extreme lows, as on the absolutely crushing album closer “Kill Me” that sees death as the only way out of a cripplingly one-sided relationship, but there are also unbelievable highs. “Hold U” is an effervescent love song that harnesses the earnestness of true affection in a way that feels inescapably positive.
Where De Souza really shines is her writing and vocal delivery, and Any Shape You Take is filled to the brim with unfiltered emotion conveyed with an eloquence and vulnerability that is breathtakingly honest. The bulk of the album focuses on relationships, largely messy ones, as the involved parties work through the pain and uncertainty that comes along with growing up. “I just can’t lie to myself, when I’m with you I’m somewhere else” sings De Souza on “Pretty Pictures,” as she works through a difficult but necessary breakup with someone she truly cares about but no longer in a romantic way, driving the point home with the tender “you deserve to get what you’ve been giving.” Trembling vocals on “Late Night Crawler” teeter on the brink of sobbing while the alternating hook of “I’d rather die than see you cry” / “I wanna die before you die” is delivered with the urgency of a fight-or-flight response on the borderline unhinged “Die/Cry.”
Perhaps the most innovate composition on the record sits directly in the middle in the form of “Real Pain,” a traumatic track that builds as a lo-fi guitar forward song reinforced with a tight drum beat, instruments wavering ever so slightly in unsettling directions until being gradually overtaken by a torrential outpouring of screams that run the full spectrum of emotion from joy to pain to terror to orgasm as a concentrated expression of an entire relationship from beginning to end. In the final minute the track abruptly snaps into a driving pop-grunge micro-song that tightly sums up the finality of a breakup with “I wanna kick, I wanna scream, I wanna know it’s not my fault!” before ending with a crash.
Any Shape You Take is ultimately an album for right now, a modern interpretation of universal emotions that stands head and shoulders above its peers on the strength of De Souza’s writing and commitment to unwaveringly personal storytelling, exactly the kind of writing that not only makes the concept of emo cool again, but rises above tropes to be a compelling manifesto on the enduring attraction to the turbulent trials of young love.
Any Shape You Take is available on vinyl, CD, and cassette via Bandcamp. Stream the album on Spotify and follow Indigo De Souza on Instagram.
