A mad and sad year for KT Tunstall

The last 12 months have been the toughest of the singer’s life.

In August KT Tunstall’s dad passed away and the following month she split from her husband, Luke Bullen. They’re now divorced.

Either side of those life-changing moments she travelled to Arizona, where she worked on songs that have become her new album, Invisible Empire//Crescent Moon. It’s an emotional album that showcases the St Andrews singer’s talents in a way they’ve never been heard before.

“When I went to Arizona last April, I didn’t even think I would make an album,” the 37-year-old admitted. Between meeting the producer, Howe Gelb, and flying out two months later, I wrote eight or nine songs, which came as a total surprise.

“I think it was almost a backlash to the sort of pop formula way I’d been making records. This time it was all about my voice.” She continued: “Last year was intense, the toughest year. Losing a parent is always going to be a huge change in life, it certainly was for me, and that was the starting point for a massive personal shift.

“I’d already recorded the first half of the album, then there was the crazy summer, and then I went back to do the second half in November. I almost felt like a completely new person by that point.

“There’s a very weird psychic quality to some of the songs on that first half. Like Carried, which is about how so few people die where they are going to be rested, and about the person who takes them to that place.

“Four months later I’ve got my dad in a box in a backpack, taking his ashes to London. It’s actually the easiest record I’ve ever made. In total it took just 20 days to record.”

The melancholic, acoustic-based album is KT’s fourth in a multi-million selling career. Her debut album, Eye To The Telescope, was released in 2004 and featured four hit singles, including Suddenly I See.

“It’ll be a decade next year,” she says. “One of the moments when I knew I’d arrived was when I appeared in an Oor Wullie strip! I was sent a framed copy of the cartoon and it hangs on my wall. I was really honoured.”