Animals In Exile Sketches the Scorched Cultural and Natural Landscape Under Late Capitalism on Jangle Psych Song “Misery”

AnimalsInExile2_lg — Animals In Exile, photo courtesy the artists

The “Misery” single by Animals In Exile, from the band’s third album Western Gothic, starts out in the jangle pop and psych mode that may be reminiscent to some of 90s-era Brian Jonestown Massacre or R.E.M. gone psychedelic with a dash of Americana flavor. But the songwriting takes the sound down some different paths than one might expect by bending the minor chord progression so that it blooms askew to illuminate a song that is a commentary on the way greed and how it manifests in the form of predatory real estate developers and rapacious industry is remaking our society and the world we live in into a product that is in turn used to get us to conform to patterns of behavior that reinforce that sort of economically authoritarian system and the seduction of that cycle as it is rewarded by the system in which we find ourselves living in through sheer inertia and adjusting to what we might think is inevitable change. And yet it’s a song that suggests we are aware of the destructive quality of this state of affairs and therein lies hope for change. Listen to “Misery” Soundcloud and follow Animals In Exile at the links provided.