Before singing her fifth song, “Be Like the Water,” given it was a week before Halloween, Indigo De Souza recounted a recent visit to a haunted house. She realized that the good thing about a haunted house is that you can always just close your eyes; the ghosts and demons aren’t allowed to touch you, and if you stand real still, you won’t touch them either. So, in the haunted house, she stood very still and closed her eyes. This song is about that, she said, slightly unsure about how much sense the story made.
“Be like the water/ Go where you’re going/ Say what you need to/ You know you’re dying/ I won’t be sorry/ And I won’t be silent/ I’m temporary/ I am an island,” she sang.
The song begins with this set of commands, which the second verse immediately qualifies with “Even if you do it/ It’s okay to change your mind.” In her lyrics and banter, De Souza spoke with conviction, but with a self-awareness that seems to act as a form of self-defense. She stood her ground on the rights and wrongs of the world, but remained keenly aware that the ground is fragile. Her goal, it seemed, was not to fight or to provoke. These songs and her words were made for herself and the people who need them; they aren’t intended to transform or to revolutionize.
Three months before the concert, the music review site Pitchfork rated the band’s newest album, “Precipice,” a 6.6/10. The review begins with: “Indigo De Souza is at her best when she goes big—not necessarily meaning glossy production or fancy flourishes, but monumental feeling.” Despite acknowledging De Souza’s skill as a musician, the reviewer argues that De Souza is playing it safe in “Precipice” and that the album is personal but musically generic. Ironically, four months after the review — two weeks after her show at the Royale — she headlined Pitchfork Music Festival London. She wore a white shirt for the show, on the front of which was a circle with 6.6 on the inside; on the back were direct quotes from the review.
I learned about all of this after the concert, but even if I knew beforehand, the concept of originality would’ve felt trivial. In every song, the steady drumbeat sent waves throughout the venue while De Souza’s voice traveled high like something independent of gravity and form. The demons and zombies, prematurely dressed for Halloween, screamed and hollered in this exorcism of grief, a loud profession of love.
The penultimate song, “Real Pain,” from the band’s 2021 album “Any Shape You Take,” to me, encapsulated the night. In the recorded version, the song features hundreds of screams submitted by her friends and fans, layered alongside her vocals. The screams were quieter during the performance, but De Souza’s own voice meandered higher than she ever did that night, as if trying to take on the shape of the screams of those she loved. She closed her eyes, and for a few moments, the world was just her voice, morphing in color and in form.
