Hi, friends! It’s been a while, but the Simp Lagoon has opened back up for the season.
Right as I was getting into the swing of newsletter-ing, I got a new job, which is cool and fun, but also took me a little while to get used to. I’m not saying I now have the energy or discipline to keep up with our (literally never) regularly scheduled programming, but I do kinda just want to write today? And it’s better to have done something once than not have done it at all.
Most of my past recs have been quick-fire blurbs, but for some reason, this became a whole song review. I apologize or you’re welcome, I don’t know.
Today’s song rec: Time Back x Indigo De Souza
I only read the first paragraph of Pitchfork’s review of Indigo De Souza’s All of This Will End. I try my hardest not to read other people’s words before writing my own — but the opening paragraph made me cry and then I exed right the fuck out. Let me bring myself to pulling it back up.
Indigo De Souza used to fear the reaper. Death haunted her first two albums, 2018’s I Love My Mom and 2021’s Any Shape You Take, lurking in all her relationships. Ruminating on our collective impermanence can be humbling, but for an artist preoccupied with existential doom from an early age (“Why do we die?” she asked in a childhood letter addressed to herself), it’s evidently also liberating. “Accepting you are a temporary thing is what gives way to meaning and intention and connection,” she said in a recent interview.
I don’t know that I’m scared of my own death necessarily (no, that’s a lie — I’m a hypochondriac; of course I am). But more all-consuming is the fear of day-to-day impermanence. Anticipatory nostalgia was once a diagnosable disorder, and sometimes I think I should be institutionalized. The idea of so much as looking away from a sunset and missing a second of something that will inevitably end terrifies me. Even just the title of the album, All of This Will End, had me bawling, the orange smog overtaking New York City filling my bedroom. All of this will end!!
But “Time Back” is a reminder of the healing power of impermanence, and maybe the impermanence of healing altogether. The song itself has an anticipatory element. She’s not yet speaking to her “past” self, but to a current self that she knows is floating away from her. “I feel like I’m leaving myself behind … It feels like I’m losing my best friend,” she says, wanting to hold her, just like I want to hold every moment that I’ve ever lived. But liberation comes from knowing that moments don’t have to be “held” to have been important and cherished and formative.
There’s typically a sense of grounded sorrow to De Souza’s sound — she has that sad girl relatability that you might expect to see at a house show or whatever — and she starts off the song with a sound somewhat similar to her signature style, but backed by a sort of hopefulness that is very much unlike her. And then the chorus. The chorus! There’s an explosive crescendo of gorgeous synths as she tries to embody a new self with an ethereal, floating pop diva sound that carries the same weight someone like Charli XCX has perfected. There’s a bouncing echo all around her that measures the massive space that she is occupying in that moment, and she fills it:
Don't bleed me dry
We are capsized
And I feel you dying
But I'm safe inside
People seem to think this is about letting go of a relationship with another person, but it feels obvious to me that it’s about a deep-rooted internal struggle with who she allowed herself to become. I don’t think she feels her love for anybody else dying, but the weight of fear and panic and sorrow being lifted to reveal some sort of life. The breakdown does my theory no favors if you look at the lyrics in a very literal sense, but that’s a lame approach!
You're bad
You suck
You fucked me up
I'm sad
I'm tired
I want my time back
You're bad
You suck
You fucked me up
I'm fine
Getting better
Still want to–
Yeah, okay. Sure. She could be talking about someone else, especially with that last omission — but I think, even if that’s true, the song has nothing to do with them and everything to do with her own transformation.
The song ends with what I think of as a haunting, buzzy seance with her old self, sonically reminiscent of early FKA Twigs. Maybe she is finally communicating with a past life she has succeeded in burying in the span of this 2-minute ride, or maybe that version of herself is speaking to her, threatening to return.
Hmm, please God forgive me
I've been speaking death
And when I come homе
When I come home
I will bеgin again
Ultimately, it’s all impermanent: freedom, melancholy, empowerment, disillusion. It’s only our relationship with ourselves, however treacherous and turbulent, that seems to be cyclical.
And that’s all I’ve got. Again, sorry this was long — or you’re welcome! As always, our little playlist is here below. See ya!
That picture at the top is by Dexter Webb. I don’t own anything. I’m almost always broke, actually.