Saddle Up: Indigo De Souza on Any Shape You Take

The centrepiece of Indigo De Souza’s second album, Any Shape You Take, features over a minute of screaming, nestled in the middle of a track called Real Pain. Being an incredibly physical expelling of emotion, there is something deeply overwhelming about the expression of screaming, and De Souza captures that intensity so well that it’s almost difficult to listen to at times.

The screams were entirely crowdsourced, gathered by De Souza through an online call-out for “screams, yells and anything else”, and all 60 of the soundbites that were submitted to her were included within the final version of the track. “It was painful to listen to some of the recordings,” says De Souza. “It was definitely a catharsis to hear them all together, and to add my own voice in with theirs. It was kind of like a collective pain that felt good to express at the time of the pandemic.

“Pain is always there; everyone is always in some kind of pain,” she continues. “And there was something really special about when the pandemic was happening, there truly – and I guess there still is in ways – there is a more collective pain than usual. I [often] feel more separated from people and more alienated in my brain, but at that point it was like, 'we're all going through something together for the first time, we're all collectively feeling a similar thing'.”

Born into a creative family – her father is a bossa nova guitarist and singer, and her mother an art teacher – De Souza’s musical journey began at nine years old when she first started playing guitar. She was encouraged to do so by her mum as a means of bringing her out of her shell and combatting her shyness, so to name her debut album I Love My Mom, then, feels like a fitting homage.

Originally released in 2018, I Love My Mom was reissued in June this year, following De Souza’s signing to Saddle Creek and just a couple of months ahead of the release of her new album, Any Shape You Take. Both albums were written around and document a particular time period in De Souza’s life, during and in the aftermath of a tumultuous relationship.

From the Day of the Dead-style artwork – designed by De Souza’s mother – to track titles like How I Get Myself Killed, Die/Cry and Kill Me, death looms fairly heavily on both records. Instead of a literal death, though, it feels more metaphorical. 'Now that the baby’s gone,' sings De Souza on 17 – the opening track on Any Shape You Take – seemingly suggesting a transitional period from her teenage years into adulthood.

“It feels like everything I'm doing with music is never super intentional, but more natural,” says De Souza. “So they're companion albums in that way, because they really kind of carry on from each other, but there are also newer songs on this album, too, that I wrote more recently… To me, they're just narratives of my life, and they all feel very connected, and all of the old parts of myself feel very close to me now still, and always will.”

Having recorded I Love My Mom at home in Asheville, North Carolina between her living room and bedroom, De Souza made the jump from home studio to professional recording studio for the new album. Any Shape You Take was recorded at Sylvan Esso’s studio, Betty’s, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and produced alongside executive producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee). “[I Love My Mom] was kind of like before I knew anything about anything,” says De Souza. “I was just like a little baby, starting to play music with a band for the first time, and all these songs that I had been singing by myself for years, I suddenly was singing with a band.

“[Any Shape You Take] was a very different experience, having the resources that I had and being able to explore every avenue that I wanted to,” she continues. “I love feeling really cozy and comfortable, and like I have a lot of resources in a nice studio… but I also miss a lot of the aspects of the DIY feeling and I think next time I want to do a little bit of both, so I have the best of both worlds.”

As we leave De Souza to return to the shooting of the music video for Hold U – the latest single to be taken from Any Shape You Take – it feels an apt way to end our conversation. Perhaps her brightest, most hook-laden track to date, Hold U sounds like De Souza coming out the other side of that difficult period of her life and simply declaring 'It’s gonna be alright'.

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Any Shape You Take is released on 27 Aug via Saddle Creek