FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
KT Tunstall – Tiger Suit
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I am going to be looking at…
the original 2010 release but, as the Untamed Edition was released in October, it is a good time to feature KT Tunstall’s incredible third studio album, Tiger Suit. You can get the original here, whilst the newer version can be bought here (which includes previously unheard demos of tracks from the album). I really love Tiger Suit. It is an album that took Tunstall’s music to a new level. Before that, she won critical acclaim, but I think Tiger Suit was her best-received album to that point. I am going to source a couple of positive reviews in a bit. Push That Knot Away and Fade Like a Shadow are two of my all-time favourite KT Tunstall songs. I think Tiger Suit marked a slightly new sonic and dynamic approach to Tunstall. It was a bit of a shift from 2007’s Drastic Fantastic. I was checking the Wikipedia entry for the album and was interesting discovering the background to Tiger Suit:
“On 11 February 2010 reported that, "KT Tunstall has recorded her new album in Berlin's famous Hansa studio. The studio, beside the site of the Berlin Wall, was used to make legendary albums including David Bowie's Heroes and U2's Achtung Baby. KT said: "I had an amazing three weeks recording in Hansa in Berlin in January and am finishing it all off in London." The Scots singer, who has been quiet of late, reassured fans she has been busy. She added: "I am still very much alive and have every music-making limb and muscle working in my laboratory of fierce-new-album-ness."
Before her album comes out, KT played a stripped-down set at the Haiti fundraising gig at the Roundhouse in Camden on Thursday 25 February. She hoped to jump up with her old pal Seasick Steve for a song or two. Kt added: "My shizzle will feature some new faces and definitely some new songs, so come and have a listen and chuck some dough at a good cause.""
She stated down the line from a promo stop in Minneapolis that she doesn't write on tour, "so it was essential that I took time out from her previous album Drastic Fantastic". She had started her time off by travelling through the Arctic, South America and India, so she had locked into a very primal, indigenous spirit by the time it came to recording”.
An inventive album that strengthened Tunstall’s songwriting, Tiger Suit is a remarkable work from the Edinburgh-born artist. Reaching number-five in the U.K., there was a lot of support and love for the album. AllMusic noted how Tiger Suit was Tunstall’s strongest set of songs to that point:
“Drastic Fantastic -- the spangly attempt at pop stardom consolidation -- didn’t catch on like it should have, but KT Tunstall doesn’t quite beat a retreat on its 2010 sequel, Tiger Suit. Sure, she’s reverted to contemplative photographs for her album art, but Tiger Suit isn’t a hermetically sealed sensitive singer/songwriter record, all quivering sincerity and strummed guitars. Fittingly for an album recorded at Berlin’s Hansa studio, where Achtung Baby and Heroes were cut, it is produced, polished, and textured, an album with movement and progression. Once the ominous opening chords to “Uummannaq Song” drift away, the song settles into a tight art-funk groove accentuated with folk shout-alongs, following no straight path to its conclusion. Tunstall takes no direct routes on Tiger Suit -- not when she slows tempos down, not when she recycles the “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” rhythm for “Come on, Get In” -- but the twists that take her into the fuzzy glam-stomp of “Madame Trudeaux,” the whistled hook of “Glamour Puss,” the tight swirling circles of “Difficulty,” or the languid European blues of “Golden Frames” aren’t self-conscious stylizations, they’re lively and unexpected, colorful enough to grab upon first listen and rich enough to reveal layers upon repeats. As sonically pleasing as it is, Tiger Suit isn’t a mere vehicle for sound; it’s built upon Tunstall’s strongest set of songs yet, and it’s no coincidence that they’re her most ambitious, either: she may be firmly within the mainstream but she’s taking risks as a composer and record-maker, never settling into the role of the earnest earthbound folkie, winding up with an excellent album that satisfies as pure sound and as songwriting sustenance”.
I think KT Tunstall is an artist who many people know about, and yet her music is not played as widely as it should be. She is an artist who has developed and evolved through the years. 2018’s WAX (her sixth studio album) ranks alongside her best work. The BBC wrote the following in their review of 2010:
“It looks like a shapeless stripy jumper on the album cover, but KT Tunstall's Tiger Suit is her protection against the world, a clawed insurance in the face of critical brickbats and the pressures of having to go out there and be a star. It's served her well. Three albums in, Tunstall appears undamaged, an ordinary girl you'd want to spend time with and an honest performer it's hard to dislike.
What sounds like faint praise is more charitably cast as recognition that Tunstall has settled into a familiar groove. Years of busking and almost wilful avoidance of the spotlight meant that by the time the Mercury-nominated Eye to the Telescope turned up in 2004, Tunstall was fully formed as an artist, equipped with an effects pedal and songs that sat just on the edgy side of AOR. Second album Drastic Fantastic barely tinkered with the formula, but suffered from a relatively short gestation.
So Tiger Suit stands at a crossroads, an ideal opportunity to take a few risks. This, according to KT, manifests itself in a dancier feel to the songs. It's true that producer Jim Abbiss – who put the laddish funk into Kasabian – brings a dusting of sequenced beats to the clattering, bolshy Uummannaq Song and the flirty Glamour Puss, but it's a toe in the water. More striking is the almost ravey building intensity of Difficulty: intriguing electro-rock that wouldn't sound out of place on U2's Zooropa, in a good way. Even so, these end up rare deviations from the KT template.
The sort of old-school, heavily rhythmic rock’n’roll that characterised earlier hits Suddenly I See and Hold On is still very much in evidence. Push That Knot Away is Bat for Lashes gone high-velocity blues; Golden Frames is sinister vampire bluegrass; and the brash Come On, Get In is standard tribal KT, hollering and stamping. It’s all no end of fun, without pushing any envelopes.
More surprising is (Still A) Weirdo, a quirky slice of Beatley clever-pop that recalls Elliott Smith – and the squeezy, dirty grind of Madame Trudeaux, where Tunstall manages to rhyme "repertoire" and "admire" in a terribly posh English accent. It shares a sexy charisma with Glamour Puss, and is just the ticket, respite from some of the more coasting material. A bit of "grrr" does Tiger Suit no harm”.
A fantastic album that should be snapped up on vinyl, make sure you get a copy. I heard songs from the album back in 2010, yet it is the last few days or so when I have been reconnecting with the album. As a complete work, it is a wonderful listen. If you have not discovered and listened to Tiger Suit, then take some time aside to enjoy…
A great record.