KT Tunstall: Invisible Empire/Crescent Moon

Arguably Tunstall's best album, and undoubtedly the most satisfying since her promising debut nine years ago.

KT Tunstall The Wickerman Festival, East Kirkcarswell Farm, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, Britain - 27 Jul 2013 (Rex Features via AP Images)

K?T Tunstall
Invisible Empire/Crescent Moon
****

The autumn of 2012 began in a torrid fashion for K?T Tunstall. In August, the Scottish singer-songwriter’s father died and the following month saw the end of her four-year marriage to her regular drummer, Luke Bullen. Such a run of events would be overwhelming for many, but the paradox of popular music is that anguish and adversity frequently inspire fine work.

So it proves here, as Invisible Empire/Crescent Moon is arguably Tunstall's best album and undoubtedly the most satisfying since her promising debut, Eye to the Telescope, nine years ago. The two records in between saw the once folk-fuelled singer experiment with less organic material: overly polished glam-pop on 2007's Drastic Fantastic, and electronic beats on 2010's underwhelming Tiger Suit. Here, the tone is more sedate and traditional, focusing on the distinctive songwriting that initially brought her talents to worldwide attention (Tunstall's US breakthrough was due to an American Idol contestant covering her track Black Horse and the Cherry Tree in 2006).

The two-part title refers to the record's two differing sides, a nod to long-players of old. Interestingly, the loss-themed first half was actually written in the months leading up to those traumatic events, its stripped-back style having been heavily inspired by a tour with her old folk colleague King Creosote. The tone is set by the opening bars of the album's most hummable tune, Invisible Empire, a childlike woodwind intro giving way to elegant strumming and some truly heartbreaking harmonies.

Another early highlight is the lovely Carried, a suitable canvas for Tunstall's new-found vocal confidence and lyrical openness; particularly telling are her "agoraphobic ifs and buts" and trepidation at the "stultifying open road" ahead. Meanwhile, Old Man Song's unusual instrumentation and the magnificent rising drama of the piano-led Crescent Moon owe much to an astute choice of the producer, Howe Gelb of the alt-country innovators Giant Sand. Most of the album was recorded in Gelb's remote Arizona studio and a country-rock feel takes precedence on side two, completed in November as Tunstall strove to stride positively forward. These are beautifully constructed songs, often building majestically from the affectingly acoustic to the dramatically atmospheric, best illustrated by No Better Shoulder's cathartic power. And while including two versions of the admittedly splendid Feel It All is slightly curious, they do sum up the album's dual personality rather well: sombre introspection, then a bold, guitar-led finale.

The road ahead now looks considerably sunnier.

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