Any Shape You Take

Description

Everything has to be said. This is the conviction guiding Indigo De Souzas sophomore album, Any Shape You Take. This dynamic record successfully creates a container for the full spectrumpushing through and against every emotion: I wanted this album to give a feeling of shifting with and embracing change. These songs came from a turbulent time when I was coming to self-love through many existential crises and shifts in perspective.

Faithful to its name, Any Shape You Take changes form to match the tenor of each story it tells. The album titles a nod to the many shapes I take musically. I dont feel that I fully embody any particular genreall of the music just comes from the universe that is my ever-shifting brain/heart/world, says Indigo. This sonic range is unified by Indigos strikingly confessional and effortless approach to songwriting, a signature first introduced in her debut, self-released LP, I Love My Mom. Written in quick succession, Indigo sees these two records as companion pieces, both distinct but in communion with each other: Many of the songs on these two records came from the same season in my life and a certain version of myself which I feel much further from now.

Throughout Any Shape You Take, Indigo reflects on her relationships as she reckons with a deeper need to redefine how to fully inhabit spaces of love and feels so important for me to see people through change. To accept people for the many shapes they take, whether those shapes fit into your life or not. This album is a reflection of that. I have undergone so much change in my life and I am so deeply grateful to the people who have seen me through it without judgment and without attachment to skins Im shifting out of.

Growing up in a conservative small town in the mountains of North Carolina, Indigo started playing guitar when she was nine years old. Music was a natural occurrence in my life. My dad is a bossa nova guitarist and singer from Brazil and so I think I just had it in my blood from birth. It wasnt until moving to Asheville, NC thatIndigo began to move into her current sound, developing a writing practice that feeds from the currents that surround her: Sometimes it feels like I am soaking up the energies of people around me and making art from a space that is more a collective body than just my own.

At the forefront of all De Souzas projects is her magnetismher unique quality of spirit that is both buoyant and wise. While her backing band has undergone shifts between releases, her sound has stayed tethered to her vision. Any Shape You Take is the first full-length album that Indigo produced herself. Teaming up with executive producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee, The War on Drugs) and engineers/producers Alex Farrar and AdamMcDaniel, Indigo recorded the album at Bettys, Sylvan Essos studio in Chapel Hill, NC and finished it with additional production and mixing at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville. Moving past the limitations of a home studio, Indigo could finally embody the full reach of her sound: It felt really exciting to lean into my pop tendencies more than I have in the past and to trust my intuition to take the songs where I felt they should go.I had the tools to do it and collaborators who were willing to go there with me.

I feel very much like a shape-shifter with my music, Im always trying to embody a balance between the existential weight and the overflowing sense of love I feel in the world. It is exactly this balance that Indigo strikes in her Saddle Creek debut, Any Shape You Take. A listening experience that gives back, as you shed and shape-shift along with her.