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Music

The Katherines Find Strength in Sisterhood

Just stop calling them Canadian Haim.

Who is Katherine? Truthfully, Katherine isn’t a real person, and certainly not one who makes up The Katherines, a Vancouver based band—a trio of young women. In reality, the band is comprised of sisters Kate and Lauren Kurdyak, and family friend Kaitlyn Hausen-Boucher. But Katherine is something, in any case.

“She’s a bold collective identity—more of a symbol,” lead singer Kate Kurdyak says to me via the phone. “She doesn’t seem like a person to me but a feeling, an idea. There’s a lot of different traits of what a Katherine could be. It’s definitely not any one of us.”

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“When you are doing music, to a certain extent, you feel like it’s a different part of yourself,” she continues. “There’s something special or different about who you are when you’re performing or recording. You have to be something a little above. You step into your Katherine.”

What The Katherines would eventually be originated with Kate and her solo effort. She performed songs in coffee shops in British Columbia—some songs that would be on the as-yet-to-be released Katherines debut album—before filling out her sound by adding her sister Lauren and Kaitlyn. That debut, To Bring You My Heart, doesn’t have a concrete release date—at least that’s what Kate confirmed to me during our interview—but it will be out via their label, 604 Records at some point.

The girls range in age from 17 to almost 20 years old and they are still a particular kind of fresh and new with everything in life before them. Kate and Kaityln have known each other since preschool. When Kate wanted to expand from a solo effort, she asked Kaitlyn to join her and received a resounding yes. They all had been working together musically for about five years at that point anyway so her absorption into the band, into their family, was only natural, Kaitlyn says.

The Katherines’ sound is a kind of sweeping, upbeat indie pop you can find in some of the work of Kate Nash pre-girl gang, or perhaps Regina Spektor, Colbie Caillat, or even pieces of Lorde. It’s not an entirely fluffy kind of indie pop; To Bring You My Heart isn’t so much a concept album, but it is dark at times, and rooted in discovering and dissecting the connections and relationships between people.

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“I think the most interesting part of psychology is interaction with other people…Even the concept of love is such an interesting psychological thing in how it plays out, how it makes people act, and those feelings,” Kate says. “Songwriting is my way to analyze that and sort of understand it through that avenue.”

Their first single “Cherry Lips”, released this past May, explores those sentiments, playing emotional detective, if you will, about the complication of what you want from your love (or lust) and what the reality truly offers you. Kate rallies behind the murkier song “Primitive”, hoping it will be their second single. The albums is, according to the band’s site, genre jumping, to which that credit is due to the variety of people collaborating on the songs. Some of those included Tino Zolfo, Charlie Kerr (JPNGRLS), and Steve Bays (Hot Hot Heat/Mounties.)

In a way to feel accessible to their audience, I ask if they are Canada’s Haim, to which they all laugh and with unified, exasperated sighs, say they would die if they were like Haim. They are incomparable, Kate says, differing in the kind of music they create. But it grew to a larger question of what we find so entertaining about family bands because, while The Katherines aren’t a variety show kind of travelling family set—like The Osmonds or Jackson 5—there is something to be said for audiences who want to see families entertain them. A few current or recent pop and rock bands comprised of some family include: Oasis, Kings of Leon, Tegan and Sara, First Aid Kit, and Arcade Fire.

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“You see a relationship onstage more so than just seeing a performance,” Kaitlyn says.

“Our own personalities really come out, too, so there’s a large aspect of realism that comes from the family band,” Kate adds. “You can’t pretend to be anyone with your sisters. You are just who you are.”

“You can’t have some alter-persona,” Lauren says.

With each member of the band on the line with me, at times I feel like an outsider to their jokes or snickers. It’s symptomatic of being around siblings. When we talk about music, their favourite break-up songs or love songs (everyone completely agrees about the fire that is Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy”), they talk to each other, not me, and it’s a kind of comfort, esoteric way anyone with a sister can relate to. I sat in my own sister’s home office in our hometown at the time of the interview, surrounded around bits of our childhood, and could, as a listener, relate to these girls.

Even with someone who is not biologically a sister, that kind of nurtured relationship is very apparent.

“I feel like that because of the dynamic, and always being around Kate and Lauren, they are sisters. I’ve always treated them as my own sisters too,” Kaitlyn says. “It’s definitely brought us much, much closer. I feel like in a different kind of situation where no one is family in the band it is kind of a very more strict business relationship. This one is much more family oriented.”

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We get to the topic of women in music and what being in an all girl band means. The way women are written about or featured in music is gendered; separating them out of what always felt like a traditional boys club. When we speak about these creative women, we talk about it very explicitly, like pointing out an all girl band needs to be said as a precedent, still, for some reason. It happens when a male reporter or roadie or dude in a mediocre pop punk band tries to explain away women’s roles and contributions in music (look to Jessica Hopper’s recent Twitter conversation on the varying degrees of how women associated to the industry are treated.)

Being a newish band in the public sphere comprised of all women, but not immune to it privately, I ask them how they feel about such a category; if it is perhaps more invigorating and proud to be classified as an all-female band or if they’d rather be included simply as a band, just like the boys eternally have.

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“I think that depends on how we leverage it,” answers Kate. “I think we can leverage the fact that we’re three girls. If we could use that whole thing of us being branded as a girl band to leverage that and talk about power to women being professionals, starting businesses, having creative talents and abilities, and making careers for themselves, and also about loving yourself—that’s a huge thing too.”

“The only downside of being called a girl band is the questions,” Kaitlyn says.

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“Well, it pigeonholes you,” Lauren says.

“If we leverage that to do good then I’d be happy about that and wouldn’t need to be called just a band,” Kate says.

They sound relaxed and sure when I ask what they hope for their debut, whenever it is released, despite all the talk and pressures of being a successful set of women in this industry. Unanimously they agree on that they hope it matters to someone, somewhere.

“That’s my main very simplistic dream. Even if it’s a few people who listen to it from beginning to end and listen to the lyrics and appreciate it,” Kate says. “It’ll mean something to someone—that’s the dream.”

Sarah Macdonald is a writer living in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter.