I agree. Apple's been down this path before... From Mac OS 10.0 to 10.9, the march was steadily toward trimming back the excessive Aqua-ness.
Then we went totally flat in 10.10, and it was pretty awful then too. I'll stay on Sequoia until Apple irons this out in 2-3 future macOS versions, or maybe it's finally the year of the linux desktop... at least in my world.
This is the kind of design that does great in a 15 minute user test, but is annoying 2 months on.