Katie Ellen Share New Track “Sad Girls Club”

artist credit: Anika Pyle

Katie Ellen Share New Track “Sad Girls Club”
Debut LP Cowgirl Blues Out July 14, 2017 on Lauren Records
On Tour Now

Philadelphia via Brooklyn band Katie Ellen has released a new track from their upcoming debut LP Cowgirl Blues today. “Sad Girls Club” is a deeply personal song celebrating emotional vulnerability, owning your power and following your truth. The song is one of the band’s most affecting, and noticeably resonates with audiences whenever the band plays it live. Singer Anika Pyle reads a powerful manifesto each time before launching into the song, which can be read below. Cowgirl Blues will be released on Lauren Records on July 14, 2017. NPR premiered the first single off the record, titled “Lucy Stone”.

The Sad Girls Club is for anyone who is emotional and not sorry for it. It is for anyone who expresses their feelings openly and honestly and refuses to be shamed for it. The Sad Girls Club is for anyone who values empathy, kindness, and vulnerability over oppression, suppression, and aggression. It is especially for those of us raised as girls, expected to sacrifice our needs and desires for the good of the family, the business, the status quo, patronized or deemed hysterical for expressing our emotions, taught from birth that the exhibition of our feelings would hinder our success. It is also for those of us raised as boys, imprisoned by a notion of masculinity that requires us to abandon our feelings, to run from our most vulnerable spaces, to detach from our sensitive selves. It is for those of us raised as boys or girls who feel no connection or allegiance to either, searching for meaning in an archaic system that has historically provided little room for redefinition or revolution. The Sad Girls Club is a space to imagine a world where our capacity to emote or succeed is not directly correlated to our sex assigned at birth, to find courage in vulnerability, to embrace the radical potential of feelings and to invoke the qualities of the feminine in all people so that we might create a kinder, fairer, gentler world where we are not afraid to feel.

 

Tour Dates:
6.22 – Honolulu, HI @ Downbeat Lounge
6.23 – Honolulu, HI @ Hawaiian Brians
6.25 – Pomona, CA @ VLHS
6.27 – San Luis Obisbo, CA @ SLO BREW
6.28 – Santa Barbara, CA @ The Hard To Find
6.29 – Santa Cruz, CA @ Subrosa
6.30 – Oakland, CA @ 1234 Go Records
7.13 – Philadelphia, PA @ PhilaMOCA (Record Release Show!)
7.14 – Brooklyn, NY @ The Safari Room at El Cortez (Record Release Show!)

Biography:

Shortly after the disbandment of their critically acclaimed indie punk band Chumped in early 2016, lead singer Anika Pyle and drummer Dan Frelly started katie ellen as a fuzz pop two-piece. The duo went on to release a three-song demo on Jeff Rosenstock’s Quote Unquote Records, and a 7” on Lauren Records, then recruiting friends Anthony Tinnirella (guitar) and Eric Sheppard (bass) to round out the sound and record their debut LP – Cowgirl Blues.

Cowgirl Blues is ten songs of twangy, pop forward indie punk with subtle country underpinnings, showcasing Pyle’s knack for punchy, melodic songwriting familiar to fans of Chumped while exploring more dynamic and intimate arrangements that nod to contemporaries like Waxahatchee, Alvvays, All Dogs and Pinegrove. Pyle notes 60s girl groups, Patsy Cline and Jenny Lewis as writing influences which bloom amidst she and Frelly’s longstanding dynamic, Tinnirella’s clean and classic guitar leads, Sheppard’s tasteful bass and Beach Boys-esque harmonies.

The name katie ellen is an adaptation of Pyle’s great grandmother’s radio stage name – Kaytee Ellen. “She was a young mother who defied expectations by pursuing a career in journalism in the 1950s,” says Pyle. “When she tried to take her identity, Kaytee Ellen, to other creative endeavors, a legal battle ensued and the courts determined that the radio station she worked for (KTLN) owned her namesake, and thus in many ways her professional and personal identity.”

“Calling the project katie ellen felt like taking something back from a structure of ownership that put profit before my great grandmother as a person and deemed her on-air personality disposable and replaceable by any other woman. It also lent me a bit of creative anonymity to try new things and explore my own identity, especially as it pertains to autonomy, femininity and vulnerability.”

That sentiment permeates Cowgirl Blues, a record steeped in the discourse between freedom and commitment. Pyle notes, “I wrote the record at the end of a formative creative project and an eleven-year relationship that lasted for much of my young adult life. It represents, to me, the reimagining of identity and the search for personal truth, a process that can be harrowing if you discover that what you want defies people’s expectations of your gender, your sexuality, and your future. If following your truth requires upheaval of the normative and the status quo, stay and you could be happy but you will always be at odds with yourself. Go and you accept a path of rebirth and constant negotiation, not always ‘happy’ but wild, free and true.”

Cowgirl Blues is out July 14, 2017 on Lauren Records.