There’s a strong flavour of magic in Kyla Tilley’s music. Boasting a peculiar style that borrows from Folk and soft Rock, while focusing on deep storytelling, the Canadian singer-songwriter has just released a brand new record, an album titled ‘Bloom and Grow’.
In it, you’ll find 12 tracks, ranging from acoustic, intimate ballads to more upfront, complex numbers. What you will find more comforting, however, will be Tilley’s evocative tone, intense yet gentle, capable of enduring complex melodies while maintaining a friendly outlook, allowing the listeners to fully absorb the magnitude of her artistry.
Perhaps not a record for everyone, the keen music connoisseur won’t be afraid to immerse themselves into the rewarding sonic universe of Kyla Tilley. Intrigued by the project, we sat down with the Canadian talent to find out more about her music and future goals… Interview below!
MESMERIZED: Hey Kyla, how is it going? some of our readers might not be familiar with your project, how would you describe yourself, in a few words?
KT: It’s going well! Thank you for having me on. I’m a singer-songwriter and guitar player with a penchant for high heels who is easily distracted and interested in everything. I’m very folky, but I love prog and metal and that comes through in my songwriting. I live in Newfoundland and Labrador on the far east coast of Canada.
MESMERIZED: Your current work is the result of a long journey; What first drew you to making music?
KT: My parents stuck a classical guitar in my hands when I was 11 and sent me to lessons and I never looked back. I always liked listening to music, and my parents and older brothers were also musical, so I suppose there was some inevitability involved in my becoming a musician. Somewhere in my early teens, it dawned on me that I could play chords and sing over them, and sometime in my late teens it dawned on me that I could also write songs.
MESMERIZED: If you had the opportunity to pick any artists in the world for a collaboration, who would be your first choice? (and second choice, perhaps?)
KT: I’m gonna go with Billy Joel. He is in a bit of a different genre from me, but he’s got a real musical theatre flare that I think would be a good bridge between our different styles. I’m also a little obsessed about his involvement with the psychedelic heavy metal band Attila in his early days. He also has a lot of songs that are actually really folky, but they’ve been given the big pop production, but then there are often some really weird choices in his pop production, so… I just wanna talk to that guy. For a lot of similar reasons, I’d love to collaborate with Janelle Monáe. She’s a pop star that puts out concept albums! She’s so creative and bizarre and I find that thrilling! More realistically, and again because she’s done some wildly diverse stuff, I’d love to do something with Chenél no 1, who first put the idea of a Billy Joel collab in my head.
MESMERIZED: You recently released a long album, ‘Bloom and Grow’. In it, we find inspired lyricism and strong musicianship. Is the lyrical aspect more relevant to you, than the pure sonic content?
KT: I think song structure is the most important aspect to me. I’m definitely a form over sonics kind of composer. It’s funny about the lyrics. When I listen to music, I don’t notice lyrics at first, I’m really more drawn to melody and rhythm, but if the lyrics are bad, or meaningless, it can really turn me off a song, so I’ve always put a lot of effort into writing lyrics that tell a story. I have always thought of myself first and foremost as a guitar player, so having interesting guitar lines and fun chord progressions has always been very important to me.
MESMERIZED: There is a richness of themes in the record, which particularly helps your complex storytelling. Are songs drawn from personal experiences? What are your primary inspirations?
KT: I’m always on the hunt for inspiration. I pride myself on being able to take the simplest seed and turn it into a song. There is certainly a huge dose of me in every song on this album, even when the inspiration was external. I would say that this is a particularly personal album for me. The League is based on the movie Salute of the Jugger, which I watch every January to pump myself up to pursue my goals. The Dragon is based on the Yakuza video game franchise, but I identified so strongly with the main character in those games I had to write about it. The Circle and After the Battle were inspired by the Histories by Herodotus. He opens his history with the statement that he wrote these stories down so the deeds of great men won’t disappear with the sands of time and I was just so moved by that. Those feeling are so universal and human. With the Circle, even though I wrote about an ancient warrior about to partake in single combat, I was thinking about all the things that go through my head when I step onto a stage, so it still draws from personal experience. Swimsuit & Axe and Song Like John the lyrics were written by my close friend and former bandmate Cara Winsor-Hehir. Swimsuit & Axe is a very personal song for her, and Song Like John is a tribute to John Prine and the lyrics contain references to her childhood and mine.
MESMERIZED: Are we correct in guessing your musical education is quite eclectic? Odd time signatures, prog elements, is that something you vibe with?
KT: Yes, that’s spot-on guess. I learned to read music as a kid in school, and reinforced that with classical guitar lessons. I never went to music school, but I grew up listening to a lot of different music, and later played in a lot of different types of bands, including folk, country, classical, doom, and I still play in a progressive metal band. I love prog. Friends call me Queen Prog. Jethro Tull, Rush, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, they were huge influences on me. I’m also a big metalhead. Morbid Angel, Necrophagist, Enslaved. I just love fast, heavy music with complex harmonies. I grew up in Newfoundland which has a strong Celtic tradition and a lot of those tunes have turnaround bars where a beat is dropped. The result of all that is that odd time signatures and rhythm come quite naturally to me. I also sang in a choir for 10 years that did a mix of contemporary classical, more traditional classical, and folk music. Add in having a father who loved opera and musical theatre, then as a classical guitarist I really loved the baroque composers, particularly Bach. On top of that, I was living in St. John’s in my early 20s which is just a hotbed for singer-songwriters, and I also love singing ABBA and 80s pop at Karaoke. Eclectic is the word.
MESMERIZED: Artistically speaking, what challenges have the last two years presented you with?
KT: Artistically the last two years have actually been fantastic for me! The biggest challenge was at the start of the pandemic when I was living in an apartment in Montreal and my rehearsal space was locked down. I suddenly had all this time to devote to writing new music instead of performing but my neighbours were less enthusiastic. Me and my husband ended up making the decision to move back to Newfoundland where I was able to set up a home studio. I’ve been writing songs live on my Twitch show, and have started recording them on the air as well. Because I’m trying to keep people entertained, it’s led me to do some really fun, and often bizarre experimentation. I guess I’m quite fond of paradox and I just love how being confined to our homes has led to meeting people all over the world! I’ve made so many new friendships around the globe, and met so many musicians. One of those people I met even made a guest appearance on my album! (OrangeG who sings and plays harmonica on Apathy.)
MESMERIZED: What are the next steps for your project? Anything exciting on the horizon?
KT: For the next 24 weeks I’m going to be dedicating two weeks on social media to each song on the album. I’ll be blogging about each song, and putting up stripped-down acoustic live versions on Youtube, and I’ve put together some fun playlists. Some of the songs I wrote live on Twitch so I’ll be putting highlights from the writing process up. I’m working on a producer’s commentary for Spotify and I’m starting a Youtube live stream on the First Friday of the month. Next year I plan to record a couple of short EPs live on my Twitch show that will be made available as Bandcamp exclusives. I am still leery about booking live shows due to the covid situation, but I’m really excited about all the things I have planned to continue promoting this album. There is also another super secret project I’m involved with that I’m not at liberty to mention! I am very excited about that.
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