Another reflection on one’s youth, via Vikram…
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Vikram Joseph: “Younger & Dumber” is overwhelming in the sheer scope of its emotions. It’s the confusing, intoxicating feeling of growing out of your teenage shell into someone you don’t recognise. It’s the knowledge that pain and heartbreak shape you into the person you’ve become, for better or for worse. It’s the realisation that you contain tidal waves of feeling, enough to drown another person, enough to rupture the dams you may have built around your own heart without even knowing it. It feels like epiphany and takes me back to moments where I lay awake in bed and understood that my life was changing. And yet, for a song so heightened, the transformative power comes from its composure. An alt-country ballad that builds and breaks, builds and breaks, “Younger & Dumber” is so utterly self-possessed: unhurried and lucid, every production detail shimmering and perfect, from the crystalline piano to the billowing walls of percussion. (I will always be a sucker for pedal steel, but I’m not sure the instrument has ever glowed as much as it does here.) Indigo De Souza delivers a sensational vocal performance, exhibiting a wavering control that renders almost every line emotionally shattering. Just listen to the way she lets a syllable gently cave in on “prouder”, the tiny vibrato on “over you” in the first chorus, her intuitive grasp of cadence, her flawless instinct for when to go big and when to drop to a whisper. In mood, scale and palate this makes me think variously of “All Systems Red”, of “Thirteen Grand”, of “Song For Zula”, but it really is an absolutely singular achievement. “And the love I feel is so powerful it can take you anywhere,” De Souza sings at the song’s climax. May we all get to have that, at least from time to time; may we all get to remember how it feels when our lives change.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: My favorite Indigo De Souza songs have a certain bite to them, an acrid taste that cuts through the lushness of the song’s arrangements and the hookiness of their riffs. “Younger & Dumber” is more of a torch song, a vast and loping thing, and try as I might, I cannot quite get into it. Maybe it’s missing some last lift, or maybe I just am not in a place right now to be moved by something this meditative and dreamy.
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Hannah Jocelyn: Slow-burning theatrics from Mitski and FKA Twigs, bathetic Midwest angst from Wednesday, slide guitar and chord progression from Mazzy Star, piano chords from The National, “lonely/alone” wordplay from everyone. I don’t know why I would listen to this over any of the artists I just mentioned; it feels like a meal of tasty leftovers.
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Taylor Alatorre: A strung-together bracelet of country affectations that’s crafted with such patience and tenderness that they cease to be affectations anymore.
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Brad Shoup: The lyrical bones remind me of Bill Callahan, following Chan Marshall to a little South Carolina town. She mended herself there; he eventually hightailed it to the big city. This is half a song about someone following someone they outgrew. And it’s half a song about the peculiar intoxication of towering over everyone in your mind. That second half is supposed to justify the power-ballad structure, maybe, but I can’t even detect the love, let alone wilt before its force.
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: Indigo De Souza’s voice is the primary focus here, but the straightforward lyricism and general emotional arc only work because of the supporting cast. That first cymbal strike, in particular, arrives with the perfect amount of force. It feels like the warmth of a friend’s hand during a hug — the kind that comes without warning but is obviously needed because the rest of your body’s so numb. The congeniality feels like Over the Rhine for the Phoebe Bridgers set.
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Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Saccharine, maudlin, and wailing to the point of self-indulgence and self-parody. I had to look up Indigo De Souza’s age (26) to confirm, but this is just bait for twentysomethings who are soon headed for 30. This is all to say: I’m the prime demographic.
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Katherine St Asaph: A colossal build and a devastating story. Despite the title, De Souza doesn’t really blame her younger self for being dumber. Who among us gets to choose our formative influences?
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Michael Hong: The title itself implies growth: that with aging, De Souza has become smart. The proof is how she turns a track built around rage into love, a series of pained and furious howls shifting into a tender acceptance of the woman she’s become.
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Dorian Sinclair: I can see two paths stretched ahead of me when I sit down to blurb “Younger & Dumber”. One of them is deeply personal and is about the aching vulnerability and pain that can come with trusting somebody who abuses that trust, and the way that can rewire your entire brain for years after. How sometimes it means not only not feeling at home “in this town,” but not feeling at home anywhere, and most especially not feeling at home with yourself. That blurb is about how despite (or because of) the lack of detail in De Souza’s lyrics, it’s easy to hear my own experiences reflected in her narrative. But that blurb is scary to write, and it’s been too long since my last therapy appointment, so instead I’ll just note that her voice is very expressive, her instrumentation is very pretty, and I’m a sucker for this kind of folksy confessional writing even when it’s not reinventing the wheel. A pleasant song, even without any deep emotions involved. 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Ian Mathers: Too often, for very human reasons, we recast everything that’s come before as either for the best because of where we are now, or the source all of our current problems, probing it like a wound we can’t leave alone. But the same things that have helped build your strengths and brought you to your joys can be inextricable from the pains and traumas that you’re still struggling with. De Souza saves “I didn’t know better” for the end of the song, and by then it means something different from the clichéd way it’s often used. How wonderful, and terrible, that we all start out not knowing any better. How wonderful, and terrible, that we never stay that way. (And the pedal steel. Why does the pedal steel here just kill me?)
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Nortey Dowuona: Indigo’s voice is so deeply bracing that when she begins doing runs towards the end of the third verse, it is warming to feel the frustration — not anger, not repair, not fury, frustration — bleed though the words and through John James Tourville’s slight pedal steel. It braces you because anyone who has loved and loved the wrong person feels that frustration; once one has finally vented their speed, all that is left is the frustration, the realization that the time spent chasing love with this person was a failure and is now gone. When we are young, loving that way is simply the way we know to love since we have no frame of reference of how to love someone, so the first time we feel it — even and especially for friends — is all and completely. As Indigo says, “Which way will I run when I’m over you?” Why stay or wait or try when the best option is to run from what has hurt you? Better to heal somewhere where you are safe. But “the love I I feel is so very real it’ll drag you down,” and so running feels at first like an admittance of failure. But that’s what the young feel when they fail — when I fail. It’s the end of the world, the end of everything, we cannot survive it. And we — I — Indigo learn that we ran, we survived, we kept living, and we chose to love again. We learn but stay dumb. We age yet stay young. We keep wanting to lick the spoon.
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Aaron Bergstrom: I’ve spent most of my life angry at younger versions of myself. With the dangerous gift of hindsight, I have seen that my younger selves regularly failed to achieve perfection: they didn’t know things, they didn’t see things, they didn’t take risks, they didn’t possess the necessary skills, they didn’t act when the moment was right. Those selves let me down over and over again, and it has always been so easy to blame them for my current hardships and failings. It’s taken me a long time to forgive them, and even longer to realize that they had nothing to apologize for. This is the project of “Younger & Dumber,” an immersive journey that clicks when you realize that every pronoun is one version of Indigo De Souza addressing another. No outside force made her somebody, just as no outside force made her sour. The song takes time to reveal itself, opening on the vulnerability of a plaintive country ballad, the flower waiting to be picked, dumb but proud. Each turn picks up layers of depth and texture, tentatively reaching out into the darkness for more, different, better selves. The way De Souza whispers “run” at 1:31 is the vocalization of an ambient, directionless longing that I’ve felt since before I can remember. “Go. Somewhere. Anywhere.” It builds, slow but unstoppable, the march of time. Add but never subtract, even if you want to. Carry those mistakes, those failures. Try to use them. It gets bigger, louder, better (yes, better!), but also more complicated, splintered, fragmented, dissonant. At its apex, De Souza briefly harnesses the power of all those younger selves still inside of her, the power that could take her anywhere, the power that could drag her down. That’s an incredible accomplishment. It ought to mean that she no longer needs to run. It ought to mean that she feels at home. But it doesn’t. It’s just one more self that will be seen as younger and dumber by those to follow. May your future selves be quick to forgive.
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