We are revisiting some of our favourite albums of 2023

In our age of nostalgia, music is often trying to rehash old feelings and cover familiar ground. Each decade, however, without fail, has a new wave of artists, that pull us into the present (or the future, however you want to look at it). This decade, artists like Soccer Mommy, and boygenius, and Wednesday are leading the charge.

Indigo De Souza, who has been on the scene for about as long as those other female-fronted acts, is part of this pack of creative innovators and deep feeling genre-melding artists. With her latest album, All Of This Will End, she makes her mark as a young woman maturing into self-acceptance, finding loving community, and taking the reins of her life, even if that means disengaging from a world that is sometimes at odds with her.

“When I was younger / younger and dumber / I didn’t know better,” she sings to close the album. And leading up to that moment, is her diary-like ruminations of how it feels to create boundaries with abusive lovers, deal with anxiety in the grocery store parking lot, and enjoy something as simple as a skinny dip (“I love the water”).

There is a pop sensibility to her stuff, but there is also a furious rocking side to her music as well. When I heard them playing her new single, “Smog,” on my local public radio station, it was like I could hear the direction that music was going, and the realization that the younger generation is now taking the wheel and driving us where we’re gonna be going. “I don’t know how to turn around if I’m not ready / I don’t know how to tell you that your jokes aren’t funny.”

She is part of a generation of people, particularly young women, who are tired of the B.S. and are speaking their minds. But they are women who also have an understanding of mercy and grace, and a high value on healthy relationships. “I’m only loving, only moving through and trying my best / Sometimes it’s not enough, but I’m still real and I forgive,” she sings on the title track, which is what feels like a necessary reminder that everything eventually comes to an end, so live while you can.

It’s a visceral album: De Souza’s vocals are emotional and beautifully performed. The songs, which don’t always have the same predictable, verse chorus, verse chorus bridge format, but, like the opening song, have surprising and creative parts to them, are expertly composed. Like Wednesday, there’s even lap steel on this alternative rock record. It’s all about blurring the lines that have long been the norm, and Indigo De Souza creates a record all her own, but which is making a way for younger artists to speak their hearts and minds in compelling 2020 alternative rock.

Order All of This Will End by Indigo De Souza HERE