Little K.T Tunstall, eh? In her sexy little knee high boots and her thigh-flashing cowgirl dress and her songs about love, longing and trying to find an umbrella. She’s lovely isn’t she? Her cheeky little, pixie face and her big fat, wiggly guitar and all those happy New Years spent rubbing shoulders with Joolz Holland and his Hootiliscious Jazz Band? And what’s more she got tonsils of steel t’boot. But what’s this? ‘Parental Advisory’? ‘Explicit Content’? I mean, we knew she was feisty; all that ball-breaking, drink-the-fellas-under-table, princess/tomboy binary was part of the whole routine, wasn’t it? That was part of the attraction in the first place. Well before the average K.T. Tunstall fan begins to choke on their Cappuccino and ruins the shag pile on their sisal carpet, let me assure you that nothing has much changed beyond a few market shifting expletives and the natural inclemency of the weather. K.T is still lovely and she’s still turning out songs of such carefree, whimsical abandon that you could hook them up to your bicycle and have them steer you across hill, dale and glen without losing so much as a whistle.
‘Acoustic Extravaganza’ is the charming result of two days in a tiny recording studio on the Scottish Isle Of Skye, between Christmas and New Year 2005, just before the shit really hit the fan with old Joolzy. The initial idea, to record a minimal and unplugged album of new songs, and old songs and songs she had lying around, is said to have sprung from an acoustic evening KT and her friends started in Edinburgh a few years ago, prior to her signing her deal with Relentless and shifting 3 million copies of her debut, ‘Eye To The Telescope’. It’s not raw – far from it – but it is a stripped-down affair, apt to focus on the blues, folk and country attitude intrinsic to songs such as ‘Universe & U’ and ‘Miniature Disasters’. More Carol King than Dido, yet more Eddi Reader than, say, someone like Leadbelly or Howlin’Wolf. There’s no short supply of dough-eyed, sepia beauties like, ‘Gone To The Dogs’ and ‘Change’ and there’s also a welcome (yet strangely faithful) cover of the Beckmasters’s magical, ‘Golden Age’. All this plus a DVD featuring a ‘Making Of’ featurette and a selection of songs from the album. Not an hour too long. Not a minute too soon.
An attractive purchase for fans of the melodious jock, but I’m afraid we still don’t get a glimpse of her knickers. And for this I’m eternally disappointed.