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Swimsuit & Axe

from Bloom and Grow by Kyla Tilley

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about

I played in a heavy metal band with Cara Winsor Hehir back in the day. She wrote the lyrics and sang, I provided the riffs. I had called her to ask if I could record Song Like John as it's themes of giving yourself permission to do what you need to do fit perfectly with this album. Oh Tilley she said, I've got another set of lyrics for you. These she had written over the course of a particularly hard winter. Her father had passed away, she'd experienced the loss of a friendship and with it a club she had started. She spent the winter depressed and miserable, but when spring came she returned to the pond and remembered how much swimming positively affects her mental health. This is a song about taking matters into your own hands. Dealing with regret and depression and coming out the other side.

Cara didn't hear the finished song for some time. Usually I whip up a quick demo and send it to her, but it took months before I could sing the whole thing through without weeping.

lyrics

I'm trapped in the basement
I don't have an ashtray
and I spend my time wasting
and fretting on bad days
Black mould on the lungs
Burn holes in all of my shoes

Chorus:
If I could focus on good deeds not bad
I might have spent winter not feeling so down
Replaying what she's saying over and endless and on
I'd have strode out on the ice with my swimsuit and axe
I'd have chopped a big hole with a few clumsy whacks
and I'd drown out her voice there in the frozen pond

Throw your arms out
Unfurl your cloak
Push on through
Do the butterfly stroke
Kick out hard and ride on the wave that you make
Let the murk and the muck pass underneath
Let the grasses and fishes tickle your feet

Chorus

Float on your back
Take a breath deep
With ears full of water
You can't hear her speak
Kick out hard and ride on the wave that you make
Let the murk and the muck pass underneath
Let the grasses and fishes tickle your feet

Fingertips wrinkled
Up high on bliss
Skin smells like pond's
boggy dank kiss

Skin prickles and shiver, lips blue, digits pale
Joy quivers to bursting in euphoric flail

Chorus

Down in the bog
Cold from the spring
Leaches and eels to the rocks clinging
Musky and muddy and stinking of peat
Frog song, fly bitten
I am complete

credits

from Bloom and Grow, track released March 26, 2021
Lyrics by: Cara Winsor Hehir
Music by: Kyla Tilley

Kyla Tilley: Classical guitar, Vocals, Bass
Julian Squires: Drums

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Kyla Tilley Newfoundland and Labrador

Kyla Tilley plays guitar, wears high heels, and writes sometimes sad, often funny, occasionally disconcerting, story-telling songs which rarely rhyme.

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