Katie Tupper Releases Her Debut Album ‘Greyhound
Today, Katie Tupper releases her debut album Greyhound via Arts & Crafts. The record is about the instinct to chase–fleeting desires, guaranteed mistakes, the feeling of home, love in all its shapes and forms. It’s already knowing the ending but letting it unfold anyway. Often receiving comparisons to Olivia Dean and Charlotte Day Wilson, Tupper’s smoky alto voice wraps together soul, indie and alternative R&B with just a touch of folky twang. Born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Greyhound will bring the prairie roots of Tupper’s past to meet the blended and expanded worldview of her present.
Tupper contextualizes her debut body of work in saying, “Greyhounds that race on tracks are given these parameters and rabbit decoys to chase that are unreachable. If the front/fastest dog gets close to the decoy it just speeds up to make them run faster. The dogs think they are chasing something reachable but by design it will always be slightly ahead of them. It made me think about my relationships and how I act in the world. I am often both the Greyhound and the decoy — chasing something unreachable and being the thing that cannot be caught.”
It’s this duality – the fast and slow, the hard and soft, deep and delicate–that shapes the journey of Greyhound. This record is a homecoming, a return to her roots with years of new experience. It embraces the expanse of the endless sky and the light of the golden fields with an undercurrent of the sidewalks and skylines she’s spent years calling home.
Album standout track “Disappear” arrives today with an official live video. Simply her voice and a piano, the live video shows the elegant force within Tupper. On the album version, Jordan Rakei and Rachel Bobbitt lent their vocal talents to the slow-burning, soft ballad. Tupper shared, “I wrote this song about a relationship I was in that was progressing way faster than I felt comfortable. I didn’t speak up for myself because I was worried I would hurt this person’s feelings and as a result I could feel myself quietly shrinking over the course of it.”
Greyhound was produced with her touring partners and frequent collaborators Justice Der (Rachel Bobbitt, Dylan Sinclair) and Felix Fox (BADBADNOTGOOD). Regarding working with them, Tupper says, “Everything they created was so exciting and interesting to me that the whole album sound appeared in front of us within our first few sessions. They were my inspiration to push my sound and to explore a corner of R&B that blends soul and heavy drum and bass with delicate guitars and strings.”
Reflecting on the album as a whole, she said, “This batch of songwriting discusses difficult things but from a lens of maturity. I want listeners to feel like they’re not alone when challenging things come up. I want there to be a sense of calm and an opportunity to slow down while listening. When people read my lyrics and take away a message I want it to be one that is nuanced and that is empathetic. I think often pop music can be very polarized and harmful. I want my music to encourage people to take care of themselves and those around them by understanding that as people, we are always the greyhound and the decoy.”
Press photo by Nathan Lau [Download]