KT Tunstall

Since exploding onto the U.K. music scene in autumn 2004, KT Tunstall has emerged as one of today's most remarkable new artists. Eye To The Telescope, the Scottish singer-songwriter's dazzling Mercury Prize-nominated debut, showcases her provocative sonic mesh of heartfelt pop, bona fide electric blues, and left-field alt-folk. Songs like the album's smash singles, "Black Horse And The Cherry Tree" and "Other Side Of The World" amply display Tunstall's idiosyncratic vocal gifts and distinctive guitar playing, along with a flair for imaginative songwriting, alive with gripping lyrical bite and rare emotional power.

"On the whole, I'm a positive, skippity-la-la person," Tunstall says of her album's richly textured intensity. "But I'm equally fascinated by the dark side of life and I always want to explore that. I think it's an album full of positivity but there's stuff underneath for sure."

Tunstall grew up in the "beautiful but sheltered" university town of St Andrews. Her parents informed her at an early age that she was adopted at birth. "I grew up knowing I could have had a million different lives," she says. "It reminds you how mysterious life is and makes your imagination go wild."

That powerful imagination was also fuelled by her father, a physicist at St. Andrews, who inspired Tunstall's youthful interest in science fiction. "My dad used to take my brothers and me into his lab when we were little," she recalls. "We played games with liquid nitrogen and Van de Graff generators. He used to take us to the observatory at St. Andrews University and he'd get us up in the middle of the night to show us Halley's Comet or Saturn. That's partly why the album is called Eye To The Telescope."

From an early age, Tunstall showed an eager interest in music, first listening to her older brother's metal from outside his bedroom door, later developing her own diverse tastes. She trained in classical piano and flute, while her characteristic singing was inspired by jazz's most inventive vocal stylist. "I'm pretty certain that I learned how to sing because someone gave me an Ella Fitzgerald tape," she says. "She was my singing teacher."

By her mid-teens, Tunstall had begun putting pen to paper, writing songs she laughingly describes as "schmaltzy love nonsense. It was a complete vomit of disingenuous puppy love, but I thought I was rocking."

At 16, she took up the guitar, teaching herself from a busker's book. She received a scholarship to Connecticut's Kent School, where she formed her first band, the Happy Campers. She also became a frequent performer at local open-mic nights, where "by the second week," she recalls, "they started introducing me as their 'special guest from Scotland.'"

Tunstall returned home to study music at Scotland's Royal Holloway College. Though she had trouble putting together a band, she did manage to get her first taste of success in the campus Battle Of The Bands. "I managed to win with just a mandolin player," she smiles. "It was me and 11 Goth bands and I won!"

Taking the name KT--"I needed to do something with my name to stick out of the crowd" she explains, "and as a big PJ Harvey fan, decided to follow her lead"--Tunstall soon became immersed in St. Andrews' burgeoning alternative folk scene, a grassroots musical movement which inspired such freewheeling songwriters and artists as the Beta Band, James Yorkston, and the Fence Collective. She performed frequently, while voraciously continuing her musical education by absorbing the work of artists such as James Brown, Lou Reed, Billie Holliday, Johnny Cash, and Tom Waits.

In time, Tunstall traveled south to London where she began vigorously pursuing a career in music. She collaborated with an array of songwriters and producers, including Martin Terefe (Ron Sexsmith), Jimmy Hogarth (James Blunt, Boo Hewerdine), and Tommy D (Catatonia). With over a hundred songs in her notebook, she teamed up with legendary producer Steve Osborne-- known for his studio collaborations with such diverse stars as U2, New Order, Suede, and Doves --and set to work in bucolic Wiltshire recording her debut album.

Having recently become obsessed with the lo-fi crackle and hiss of primal blues recordings, Tunstall felt an organic approach was necessary to capture the visceral sound she heard in her head. "It's when you have to be inventive that you get interesting music," she explains. "Tom Waits says if you want something to sound like a boot hitting a cardboard box, then hit a cardboard box with a boot."

The individualistic sonic tack serves as an ideal foil for Tunstall's earnest and inventive lyrical designs. Tracks such as the poignant album opener "Other Side Of The World" survey private emotional terrain-- loneliness, conflict, regret--yet ultimately achieve great beauty and genuine catharsis.

"My songs examine and explore little specific emotions or situations or stories," she says. "They're kitchen table songs, like a conversation between me and one other person. I like the idea of focusing in on things we deem small and magnifying them to life-changing proportions."

Get her latest release, Drastic Fantastic

"Little Favours" – 3:09 (KT Tunstall) "If Only" – 3:46 (Tunstall, Jimmy Hogarth) "White Bird" – 3:13 (Tunstall) "Funnyman" – 2:56 (Tunstall, Martin Terefe) "Hold On" – 2:57 (Tunstall, Ed Case) "Hopeless" – 3:41 (Tunstall) "I Don't Want You Now" – 3:48 (Tunstall) "Saving My Face" – 3:38 (Tunstall) "Beauty of Uncertainty" – 5:01 (Tunstall) "Someday Soon" – 3:53 (Tunstall, Hogarth, Sam Dixon) "Paper Aeroplane" – 3:16 (Tunstall)