What KT did next

KT Tunstall has swapped the ‘volcano of madness’ that is London for the more rustic charms of Berkshire, and is preparing for…


KT Tunstall has swapped the 'volcano of madness' that is London for the more rustic charms of Berkshire, and is preparing for the release of her third album, Tiger Suit. She tells  TONY CLAYTON-LEA about her fears of being a disappointment and the frustrations of getting older

IT IS NO surprise to discover that KT Tunstall – part-Cantonese, part-Irish, whose adoptive parents were academics from Fife – has moved from London into the rather more rustic charms of Berkshire. Her adoptive parents met as mountaineers, and every summer Tunstall would camp out, while every winter she would ski. London, clearly, was too built up for this woman.

“I have a place with a studio,” says Tunstall in her soft, appealing Scottish burr, “where it can be so comfortable that it can get dangerously close to me just sitting down with a whiskey and a pen and paper, and not leaving. Where I live now is beautiful and quite wild, and it’s something I needed to do, because I was so distracted in London – there’s always too much to see, too many people to talk to, way too much fun to be had. And, of course, the people I work with know I’m there, and so they’ll want to get me to work.

"I was such a prolific, quick writer when I was unemployed – Suddenly I Seewas written in about 30 minutes – and part of the ease of that is because you have a huge amount of space either side of that 30 minutes. Where I come from in Scotland is beautifully rugged, wind-blown, weathered, coastal. It's quite stunning."

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Landscape, then, has played a big part in her writing and work, and her involvement with what she terms “the environmental stuff” is rooted in her having experienced such an outdoors-type upbringing and lifestyle.

“It’s also me being a total nature freak, and recognising that wild landscape makes me really happy. Being able to lose oneself in a landscape is crucial, and I realised when I moved first to London that people didn’t seem as happy as they are in Scotland. Where I grew up, the landscape is so good that it’s what you compare yourself to; it’s pretty much your mirror. Then you move to a large city, and it’s people wall to wall. That kind of mirror is probably not a good thing. At the same time I love London – it’s a volcano of madness and creativity.” She trails off, the natural assumption being that sometimes the volcano can erupt, causing more mayhem than required.

Tunstall is back in the limelight with a new album, Tiger Suit, and while it might not have the instant likeability of her 2004 debut, Eye to the Telescope, or its 2007 follow-up, Drastic Fantastic, it's nonetheless the kind of commercial, radio-friendly music that is distinctly clone-free. None of it, she says, was written on the tour bus. This is always a good thing.

“When you’re on a tour bus there isn’t a huge amount to observe,” Tunstall believes. “You’re with the same people 24/7, and my experience can be quite different from the band, especially when I’m doing a lot of promo during the day. It’s not until a year into your touring that you’re not doing interviews, and that means you can actually go out and see the places where you’re playing. Otherwise, it’s from the bus to the hotel, and from the hotel to venue, and then it’s back again to the bus.

“I like getting lost in the dumbness of touring, though. I love the lifestyle, in that it’s stimulating in a very different way – it’s like being a kid again. You’re being looked after, you’re cocooned.”

She is correct, of course. When she is on tour, she is a cosseted pop star with a tomboy face, tight jeans and a guitar draped around her. When she’s at home in the remoteness of Berkshire, she’s the steely, disciplined person who writes songs with, as she has said, whiskey in one hand and a pen in the other.

Is it easy to differentiate between the two? "That's partly why the new album is called Tiger Suit, in that there's an acknowledgement that when I go out on the road and when I go out on stage, I'm definitely wearing a kind of protective armour. In fact, it isn't even protective – it's almost a Joan of Arc syndrome, where I put on an attitude in order to be the warrior woman who rules her own universe. It's not as simple as the KT Tunstall who might be having a bit of a crappy Wednesday going on stage and telling everyone how bad the day has been."

We reckon the majority of the record- buying public has no time for their pop stars being anything other than totems of entertainment, charm, ready-to-go gossip and lifestyle perfection. In the past, Tunstall has intelligently, credibly bemoaned the nature of fame, and while she’s hardly in the same league as the one-word pop stars we get all in a Twitter about, she is nevertheless out there as someone whose music falls between the two stools of serious rock and savvy pop.

“I’m more than happy not to be overly recognised,” she says. “In context, I love it and can really embrace it. It feels like part of the communication of a gig. That’s why people are talking to you – because it’s in context. However, if I’m in a shop somewhere and someone comes up to me, I’m fairly mortified. The reason I don’t like it, more often than not, is that I find it a pressure. People have got an idea of who you are, and when I’m in the mode of a gig I am that person – I’ve got my leather pants and eyeliner on. The rest of the time I’m just a scruffy old tinker, and always think I must be a massive disappointment when people see me off stage.”

Her life has changed quite a bit since she attained crossover success in 2004 following her appearance on Later with Jools Holland. At the age of 35, does she miss anything about her 25-year-old self? "Funnily enough, I was looking back at some old footage recently, and you realise how quickly the years pass. I'm absolutely happy looking in the mirror, let it be said, I don't have any issues with it, but the only thing that frustrates me is I've noticed that the pressures of being successful are cumulative. I thought it would be an initial thing and then dissipate; that releasing records would become easier, when it has, in fact, become more difficult. That's because, I think, as you get older your standards rise, which is good, but at the same time very annoying.

“I’m so much more of a perfectionist now, and also of what I expect from other people. It’s what must happen if you want to continue to make decent music – raising the bar. It’s great fun, but, God, it was so much more fun back then when I didn’t give a shit.”


Tiger Suitis released by EMI today. KT Tunstall performs as part of the Arthur's Day celebrations on Thursday