Album Review: Greyhound by Katie Tupper
Finally dropping her debut, Tupper wrote a record about staying too long and leaving too early, often in the same relationship. The honesty is relentless and occasionally unbearable.
Most love songs pick a lane. Either you’re the one who got away or the one who wouldn’t leave, hurting or healing, or you want them back, or you’re glad they’re gone. Katie Tupper refuses the simplicity. She fades when someone comes close and spins around people who drift. She apologizes for wanting things in the same breath she promises to be someone’s shelter. On “Obviously Desperate,” for example, she begs to have her craving for attention cut out of her, admitting she goes home to touch herself so she won’t show too much too soon. Then she swears she’ll be someone’s constant form through every storm, then confesses the pressure is making her bleed.
The record was built with Felix Fox and Justice Der, her touring partners. Tupper named it after racing dogs chasing mechanical rabbits they’ll never reach, and she’s talked about seeing herself as both the dog and the decoy, chasing what can’t be caught while being the thing that won’t be held. That language could feel precious if the songs didn’t earn it. They do. “Disappear” watches her retreat every time love advances. She can’t be the answer, the end, the woman, the friend. His friends think she’s crazy, and she wonders if they’d still choose him knowing the truth. “Tennessee Heat” finds her accepting a liar because the treatment feels good, asking only to stay a while longer even though she knows it’s temporary. She delivers the bargain plainly in one line about being lied to like a dog but treated so well. “Round and Round” offers to carry someone’s bags as they walk outside, promising to wait patiently, to stay while they go, spinning around them forever if that’s what it takes.
There’s something painful about how clearly she sees herself. “Obviously Desperate” calls herself a black hole on the front porch wanting to free fall in even if it’s fatal. She needs validation to sleep and makes a self-harm joke in the second verse, tossed off casually. “Jeans” admits to crawling back after being cut down, torn denim from groveling, paying good money for therapy just to have someone listen. “Right Hand Man” resents becoming someone’s centerpiece, their source of inner peace, the other limb. He wore her favorite shirt and threw it away, called her a handful, and she stayed anyway, bleeding from the pressure of being needed that completely.
The softer songs with “Safe Ground” promises shelter without examining what that costs. “Cowboy Lullaby” apologizes for not coping better with the hellscape, for not being sexier while crying, and hooks fingers into her mouth to force a smile. The apocalypse language feels strained next to the precision of the relationship songs. “Original Thoughts” disintegrates into devotion without the specificity that makes the harder songs cut. But when Tupper is locked in, she’s just unsure if she’ll do the same thing again next time. Most singer-songwriters pick a side. She won’t.
Solid (★★★½☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Tennessee Heat,” “Obviously Desperate,” “Jeans (Fall on My Knees)”
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