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Dormant

by Exit Child

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about

“‘Dormant’ sort of just spilled out of me one day when I was staying in a mental health crisis house,” says vocalist and guitarist Anya Pulver of the gut-pummelling track. “I actually kind of loathed my relationship with music at that time and almost resented my compulsion to write. I had fallen out of love with it for the first time since I can remember. I felt music had given up on me and I gave up on myself all over again.

My life felt stagnant, which was also palpable in the world around me. I was navigating loss and the trauma that triggered, amid the tempest of a global pandemic.

The song journeys through the torment of being trapped within the confines of your mind, the pain of powerlessness and the agony of the absence of autonomy; the state of feeling stuck, suspended, slowed down - dormant. It was a deep reflection on myself and my mental health, of how I’d spent so many years focusing on trying to fix all the parts of me that were ‘broken’ and in doing so losing touch with all of the characteristics that truly define who I am.

It’s so easy to become caught up in diagnoses and therapies and self-improvement and to forget that you are so much more than your traumas and afflictions. In losing touch with who you are, I think you invite the loss of people who love who you are, which can swiftly lead to the lashes of bitterness and abandonment that seep through in the song.

‘Dormant’ is ultimately a snapshot of a cycle of despair and hope - it rises to a drastic realisation of dormancy and the desperation to break out from it, the revelation that you are who you are because that’s who you’re trying to be, even if it defies who you want to be or who you thought you were. But then it finishes with an unsettling ambiguity of submission to the constant questioning of what is right or wrong or whether we even have the strength or power to affect change.

I believe that, in order to rebuild and become everything we want to be, we have to let go of everything we are - but that can be really fucking hard. It is okay to cry, to grieve and to hurt but it is also important to know that we can turn our tears into art, our grief into growth and our pain into beauty.”

lyrics

[ LYRICS ]

I live in torment
I count the pieces of myself
That I left dormant
Trying to reach a state of health

I don’t know if I’m right or I’m wrong
I don’t know if I’ll ever be strong
Don’t know if I’ll make it out of my head
All I know is I’m here

I can’t get rid of me
Can’t get rid of me
I’m crawling, clawing at a memory
I can’t get rid of me
Can’t get rid of me
Unlearning, burning my own effigy

My love plays cautious
Then rages, reckless, I abide
Baring my all is
Too much to keep them by my side

I don’t know if I’m right or I’m wrong
I don’t know if I’ll ever be strong
Don’t know if I’ll make it out of my head
All I know is I’m here

I can’t get rid of me
Can’t get rid of me
I’m crawling, clawing at a memory
I can’t get rid of me
Can’t get rid of me
Unlearning, burning my own effigy

Maybe I am what I am trying to be
Maybe I am what I am trying to be, but it’s not me

I think I’m dormant
I think I’m dormant

I don’t know if I’m right or I’m wrong
I don’t know if I’ll ever be strong
Don’t know if I’ll make it out of my head

credits

released March 2, 2023
[ CREDITS ]

Track written and recorded by Exit Child

Anya Pulver - vocals/guitar
Joanna Bacon - guitar
Aron Newell - drums
Max Killing - bass

Produced, Engineered, Mixed & Mastered by Jamie Ward

At Giant Wafer Studios December 2022

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about

Exit Child Bristol, UK

Grunge overtones saturate Exit Child’s angsty but compassionately anarchistic themes - bound by gritty riffs, delicate melodies, rhythmic riddles and emotionally riotous vocals.

Bred by former Sœur guitarist/vocalist, Anya Pulver, Exit Child are a band who stand with the disillusioned of their time - encapsulating both suffering and hope; the pain of disempowerment and the beauty of empowerment.
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