Two years ago, KT Tunstall thought she was done with music. Not done
as in she'd never again play guitar or sing, but done playing
professionally, at least for the foreseeable future. "As an artist I
feel like I died," she says. "I didn't want to do it anymore." It had
been ten years since she'd released her multi-platinum debut, 'Eye To
The Telescope' (2004), and twenty-some years since she started playing
gigs as a teenager back home in St. Andrews, Scotland. She'd lived a
decade in obscurity and a decade in the brightest of limelights,
releasing three more critically acclaimed albums -- 'Drastic
Fantastic' (2007,) 'Tiger Suit' (2010,) and 'Invisible Empire //
Crescent Moon' (2013) -- and playing everywhere from the rooftops of
splashy Las Vegas hotels to Giant's Stadium. She'd been nominated for
a Grammy, won a BRIT and the Ivor Novello, and seen her songs used
everywhere from opening credits of "The Devil Wears Prada" to Hillary
Clinton's 2008 campaign theme. She'd had a good run, Tunstall thought,
but it was time to take a serious time out. "I was utterly burnt out,"
she says. So the singer put her stuff in storage, sold all of her
property in the UK, and started again, at what felt like the ends of
an entirely different earth, in a little house in Venice Beach,
California. She lived a quiet life for the better part of a year,
until, like a little imp waiting in the wings for Tunstall to get
really comfortable in her state of blissed out California calm, one
day the urge to rock began to return. And once it took hold, it just
wouldn't let go. "My physical body was telling me that what I should
be doing is sweating onstage," she says. "It turns out, if I can't do
that then I'm just a racehorse in a stable." Almost against her own
will, Tunstall found herself picking up her guitar and writing riffs.
And they came, one after another after another after another. The
music that Tunstall has written since moving to California is, she
says, the most impassioned and inspired of her life; these songs were
fueled by the openness of desert spaces and wild ocean cliffs, the
intimacy of being snowbound in Taos, New Mexico during winter writing
retreats, and the freedom and mystery of driving too fast on canyon
roads late at night listening to Neil Young and Tame Impala at top
volume. A new full-length album coming this September, is, in spirit,
the follow-up, to her debut. A edge-of-your-seat, psychedelic rock
record rooted in classic songwriting, but infused with the sense of
wonder and beneficent chaos Tunstall has reconnected with since
untethering herself from her past. But first up, a little teaser of
what's to come: 'Golden State,' a four-song EP out this June including
a remix of "Evil Eye" by critically acclaimed UK band Django Django.
The opening track, "Evil Eye," was the first song that came to her
since going on hiatus. "It was just a little seed," the singer
remembers. She'd been rehearsing for a string of low-key gigs where
she'd be performing some of her back catalogue, the first shows since
the relatively formal, seated gigs she'd given last time she was on
tour. "It was a vibrant up-tempo high-octane gig, after so long of not
playing that kind of show," she recalls. Something got shaken loose.
"I just got excited, and it was then that I wrote the riff for 'Evil
Eye.'" With its beguiling psychedelic whooshing intro, propulsive
guitar line and primal backbeat, the song comes on all
roll-your-windows-down-and-turn-me-up, before sneaking up behind you
with a downright chilling chorus: "There's an evil eye, watching you."
"Some of these songs are like cats, they're really furry and sweet and
then they fuckin' scratch you, and they won't let you put a leash on
them, ever," Tunstall says gleefully. Above all, what these songs have
in common is they all feel like they had to be written. And now that
they're done, Tunstall is standing at the starting line, just itching
for the gun to go off. "Getting to know myself these last few years
and getting to know what my own mind is capable of and what my soul is
capable of and what my spirit is capable of -- reading and learning
and reaching out to new people and gleaning new information about
what's possible as a human, it has all made me want to ask the same
questions of myself as a musician: how much can I expand?! Where can I
go from here?!" Tunstall enthuses, nearly out of breath. "This feels
like the beginning of the second chapter of my career."
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11/10/2016 Last update