Some songs tell stories. Others drag you into them and you are left dazed and rattled. Captivity does the latter–and is not disposed to yield kindly. The song creates the mood of deep discomfort even at the very beginning. Exzenya reinvents a folk refrain of the old with a vocal richness that paralyses you–the lower range of her voice, the ones that female singers seldom can maintain, rests naturally and hauntingly in a range that is grounded and unearthly simultaneously.
What ensues is not your average break up song or even a normal toxic relationship story. It is captivity in the most psychologically brutal sense of the word, that is, the one that deprives identity, redefines reality and turns freedom itself into a danger. With the trauma theory and behavior conditioning, Exzenya does not simply talk about entrapment, she lives it, alternating between the resonant lows of entrapment, to the screaming highs that reflect the suffocating quest to push and pull of despair and resistance.
The production is dramatic without being histrionics and allows the emotional depth to breathe. Deliberate grit in the vocals -rasp and raw texture that enhance authenticity instead of weaken it. This is not smoothed out to sterility, it is conscious, it is human, and the more so because it is so. The thing that is truly disturbing about the work of “Captivity” is the level of insight into its topic. It is not merely pointing at the dark, but it is sitting in the dark and experimenting with Stockholm Syndrome, the idea of coercive control, and the dreadful possibility: can you survive, or do you take this prison with you forever? It is a fearless, hard-boiled work of storytelling by an artist who is not afraid to take most people where they would not want to. Ghostly, enveloping, and hard to get over.
Stay connected with this amazing artist:
Discover our playlist :