REVIEW: KT Tunstall- Tiger Suit

FRENCH VERSION ALSO ON sound of violence

Third album for KT Tunstall. And we can easily tell you it's a damn pretty good one. Kate is like your usual girl next door, the good friend who takes her guitar wherever she goes and decides to start improvising over a Bob Dylan's song. Rewind: KT reached fame in 2004 with Black Horse And The Cherry Tree and its easy-to-remember « wouhou ». But she had had her share of difficulties for almost 10 years before that. From bars to mini tours, the Scotsgirl has learnt how to captivate an audience and to give her listeners the songs they want to hear and that she likes to play.


Since 2005, KT Tunstall got us used to her bluesy pop-rock. Of course, it's pretty conformist and selling but it's also fucking enjoyable. For Tiger's Suit, she had Jim Abyss, the producer of the demential Kasabian beat, to work for her. Not to change her folk tunes into some Vlad The Impaler soundalike but to include more electro sounds and rhythms, like on Uummannaq Song. And that was a good idea: Abyss managed to give her some fresh air. 

First impression with the design- gee, is it really  KT Tunstall's new album? I mean, she looks totally like Natalie Appleton on it! (come on, Natalie Appleton, Liam Gallagher's sister-in-law, Liam Howlett's wife...the former All Saints!). Well, anyway, despite this little visual bug, it's clear that KT knows her job. Of course, some people will say that there's nothing new in it, that Come On, Get In is just a copy of Black Horse, that sometimes she sounds just like Sheryl Crow (on The Entertainer or Glamour Puss), that her attempts to verge on the electro side like in Lost will go unnoticed or that this album is designed to please the ears of the average over-thirty woman and will leave a younger, rockier audience totally indifferent.


Yet KT is, before and over all, an urban folksinger, a female version of Bruce Springsteen, in skinny jeans and leather boots, a John Fogerty from the Highlands, a girl cradled by the 1990s Britrock. And that is what she keeps delivering us. Glamour Puss, Push That Knot Away or Difficulty remain in a very American blues trend, with hints of sounds Muse could use in their albums.


So if you didn't like her previous albums, you will certainly not go for Tiger Suit. But if you somehow appreciated Eye To The Telescope and Drastic Fantastic, then this album should become a classic in your record collection.