Katie Tupper Is a Little Bit Country, a Little Bit Neo-Soul
“I want to get as close as I can to making neo-soul music in a way that’s respectful to its deep, rich culture, while still respecting the fact that I’m a white woman from Saskatchewan.”
A couple of days after Toronto was hit with the biggest snowfall in the city’s history, Katie Tupper pops up on my screen in her post-blizzard best: head-to-toe grey sweatsuit, with her hoodie up and a black skully covering her head. Talking from her home in the Canadian metropolis, she also admits that she hasn’t washed her hair in a few days—a truly relatable fact in the middle of a hellish cold wave where even looking outside is somewhat fraught. Amid such conditions, Tupper’s devil-may-care coziness is not surprising, but the normal, lilting range of her speaking voice might be: Chatting with her, you’d never guess that she’s in possession of a rich, husky alto that deepens every emotion she sings about. Or that she is a 23-year-old musician who, if she wants to, could probably become a big star.
On Tupper’s debut album, Greyhound, she blends the vocal runs of a neo-soul acolyte with a light pop touch, folds jazz runs into melodies that would sound ideal on UK garage remixes, and caps it all off with a country-girl ballad with aching existential lyrics like, “Hottest of summers, atheist mothers/I can’t die alone if I’ve got multiple lovers.” On “Right Hand Man,” an upbeat pop song with a tinge of funk guitar, she sings about the way a suffocating lover is making her consider a life of monasticism: “Did you get my invite?/I wanna throw a party/Then move out to the badlands/And never speak again.” Tupper grapples with the conventions of life and love with wry humor and an observant eye as she tries to untangle the nuances of codependency, sensuality, and maturing beyond a place that can’t fit her ambitions.
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