Each Measure Feature: Exzenya

FEATURE

First of all, a warning: Exzenya doesn’t sugarcoat. Her music is not for the faint of heart, and that’s exactly what makes it worth listening to.

Her latest single, “Captivity”, ventures into water that few artists possess the skill or the courage to tread. “Captivity” is not about heartbreak. It’s not about drama. It’s not even about simple toxicity. It’s an honest, brutal, no-holds-barred exploration of the reality of abuse and trauma.

The U.S.-based artist comes from a background in psychology and communications. Perhaps it’s this expertise – paired with the relentlessly independent niche she’s carved out for herself in the music industry – that allows her to tackle sensitive subject matter with the tactful empathy and uncompromising rage it deserves. 

According to Exzenya herself, “Captivity” took inspiration from the experiences of “POW survivors, Holocaust imprisonment, kidnappings, and coercive relationships,” – very real situations in which the human psyche is pushed to extremes few of us can imagine. On “Captivity,” Exzenya brings us down into their worlds, with each verse exploring increasingly dark and painful aspects of captivity as the narrator spirals deeper and deeper into psychological ruin.

Exzenya’s lyrics alone are horrifying enough. Lines like “Keep falling deeper / In love my captive keeper” and “The insanity in these games / The fear it as instilled in me / It’s impossible to leave” confront us with the grim reality of Stockholm Syndrome the destruction of the identityin chillingly vivid detail.

But for me, it’s her sound that makes Exzenya’s new track so striking. She begins with a familiar folk refrain, “Down in the valley, the valley so low / Hang your head over, hear the wind blow,” but the way she sings it sounds almost otherworldly, and it plunges us headfirst into her landscape of gothic Americana. For every romantic love story and ode to nature in the folk tradition, there are several bloody murder ballads, so it makes sense that Exzenya chose to invoke that genre on “Captivity,” with plucked acoustic guitars and raw vibrato vocals.

As if on the edge of desperation, Exzenya’s voice trembles and wobbles throughout the track like the last lingering candle flame in a room engulfed in darkness. As a whole, the track sounds like the cry of soul caught in an internal hurricane, clinging to every semblance of stability against the windswept chaos.

Certainly, “Captivity” is an exercise in catharsis. But it’s also more than that. It’s a successful attempt to confront some the darkest corners to the human experience, to the inhabit the mindset of those who suffer the most, and the emerge with a greater sense of empathy and understanding. In other words, as a musician, Exzenya is doing her job.

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