Katie Tupper - Greyhound
- Samuel Stevens
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Katie Tupper’s debut album, Greyhound, feels like a long, slow exhale after years of movement—between cities, between versions of herself, between the person who chases and the person who can’t be caught. Out January 21, 2026, via Arts & Crafts, the record is both a homecoming and a reckoning, rooted in the wide-open Saskatchewan plains while shaped by the sidewalks and skylines that have framed her rapid ascent.
Led by Tupper’s unmistakable deep alto—warm, elastic, and quietly devastating—Greyhound blends soul, indie, alternative, and R&B into something that feels lived-in rather than polished to a fault. It’s a sound she’s been refining since her EPs Towards The End (2022) and Where To Find Me (2023), releases that earned her a JUNO Award nomination and over twenty-two million streams worldwide. But where those projects hinted at her emotional range, Greyhound stretches it fully across the horizon.
The album’s central metaphor is as elegant as it is heavy. Greyhounds race endlessly toward a mechanical rabbit that will always stay just out of reach, speeding up whenever the fastest dog gets close. For Tupper, that image became a lens for examining her own relationships and patterns—how she can be both the pursuer and the unattainable prize. This cycle of chase and retreat runs through the album like a heartbeat, shaping songs that explore romantic love, platonic devotion, and an almost spiritual attachment to place.
Greyhound opens with the track “Disappear,” setting the tone with hushed intensity and a sense of emotional gravity that never quite lifts, even in the album’s lighter moments. The pair of tracks, “Tennessee Heat” and “Whitney,” follow with a hazy, sun-warmed intimacy, Tupper’s voice gliding effortlessly over arrangements that feel equal parts grounded and airy. There’s a cinematic quality here, like watching memories flicker past a car window on an endless highway.
One of the album’s emotional anchors arrives with the album's fourth track, “Safe Ground,” a platonic love song written to Tupper’s best friend. It’s tender without being saccharine, a promise of stability in a world defined by motion. In a genre landscape that often prioritizes romantic longing, “Safe Ground” stands out for its sincerity—proof that some of the most profound love songs aren’t about heartbreak, but about showing up.
That emotional clarity contrasts sharply with the knot-in-your-stomach tension of tracks like “Sick To My Stomach” and “Obviously Desperate,” where Tupper dissects the uneasy spaces between wanting, needing, and knowing better. “Right Hand Man” pushes the album into a more funkier territory, pairing groove-forward instrumentation with an unflinching look at co-dependency. It’s one of Greyhound’s most striking moments, capturing the crushing weight of being someone’s sole source of happiness and the quiet erosion of independence that can follow.
Later tracks such as “Jeans (fall on my knees)” and “Round and Round” lean into the cyclical nature of the album’s themes, reinforcing the idea that growth isn’t always linear. By the time the final two tracks, “Original Thoughts” and the closing “Cowboy Lullaby” arrive, Greyhound feels less like a destination and more like a pause—a moment of stillness before the next stretch of road. “Cowboy Lullaby,” in particular, embodies the album’s prairie soul, riding gently into the sunset with a sense of earned calm.
Ultimately, Greyhound feels like having a late-night drink with your best friend—laughing, confessing, pointing fingers, and owning your part in the mess. It’s nuanced, honest, and self-aware without taking itself too seriously. Katie Tupper doesn’t pretend to have all the answers here; instead, she documents the chase itself, finding beauty in the motion and meaning in the near-misses. With Greyhound, she delivers a debut that is expansive, intimate, and deeply rooted—a sonic ode to the Saskatchewan plains and the complicated hearts that roam them.
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