KT Tunstall new album helped to heal her heartbreak

KT Tunstall reveals how her latest album, Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon, helped to heal her heartbreak, following the death of her father and the break-up of her marriage.

“It’s quite a mouthful,” concedes Tunstall of the “potentially pretentious” title of her fourth album, Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon. The double title reflects an album recorded in two separate sessions in April and November last year, between which “life went upside down” when Tunstall’s father died and the singer’s marriage ended.Speaking on Neil McCormick’s Needle Time, Tunstall admits that she “wasn’t planning on making a new record, so it was really quite an accidental album”. She had written “eight or nine” new songs, very quickly, and went to record them in Arizona with maverick Americana writer and producer Howie Gelb, effectively as experimental demos.

“It all fell out really easily. It wasn’t a difficult or painful process.” Yet songs like Made of Glass were imbued with a melancholic, mournful air, questioning mortality and relationships.“It feels like your subconscious can be way ahead of you, as a songwriter,” says Tunstall. “You can write a song that you think is about one thing and months later you’re playing it and thinking, hang on, this is completely informing where I am now.

”During a summer break, Tunstall split from her drummer husband, Luke Bullen. They subsequently divorced, after ten years of marriage. Then in August 2012, she cancelled live appearances following the death of her father. In November, she returned to Gelb’s studio in Arizona. “I went back out a very different person, to record the second half.”

Hence the two distinct album titles. “The first half is about controlling life, and trying to make things the way you want them, and the second half is about completely letting go, and letting life take over, and let it happen to you. If you can accept everything, the stuff that you don’t want, then you can also accept a greater level of the stuff that you do want. You widen your experience. But you must widen in both directions. You can’t just take the good stuff. The analogy is the deeper and darker the well, the more water it will hold

”Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon sounds like the record Tunstall has been moving towards all her musical life, forsaking the poppier and rockier aspects of her performances for an ethereal acoustic ambience where her extraordinary voice has space to really express emotion. It has attracted four star reviews from The Guardian, The Independent, Mojo, Q and indeed, The Telegraph. Uncut called it “a beautiful, rather brave album, and by far her best.”

“I’ve never been a confessional writer,” says Tunstall. “I’ve certainly vented, and it’s been a cathartic experience. This record was very medicinal and still is. My experience of being a singer and performer is there is something meditative and very positive about singing, just resonating the inside of your body. It actually feels physically healing to play these songs. It’s really a very positive feeling.”

Neil McCormick's Needle Time with KT Tunstall is broadcast 10pm, Tuesday July 9th. Repeated  Saturday 13th at 7pm.

Watch the preview for this week's Needle Time with KT Tunstall....