Some pretty positive reviews from the UK:
From The UK Express:
Quote:
CD review: KT Tunstall: Invisible Empire/Crescent Moon
THE fourth studio album from the formidably talented KT Tunstall is a tale of two recording sessions in Tucson, Arizona. It is, she says, a record full of songs from the heart.
The country influences are unsurprising but it gets more daring from there.
Deeply emotive and with the after-effects of her father’s recent death lingering this is a startlingly intimate record, cathartic for KT, elegiac and elegant for all.
Melodically perfect and lyrically heartfelt and with vocals that trip the eloquent songwriting fantastically, KT has on her hands a delicate masterpiece.
Verdict: 5/5
From The Guardian:
Quote:
KT Tunstall: Invisible Empire/Crescent Moon – review
(Virgin)
4 / 5
Caroline Sullivan
The Guardian, Thursday 6 June 2013 18.00 EDT
There was an experiment with a near-electro album in 2010, and that was enough to send KT Tunstall in the opposite direction for this record. The sparse, countrified tone is new for her – it was recorded in Arizona, with Howe Gelb producing – but fits the reflective mood of the songs, half of them written after her father suddenly died and her marriage ended. The hallmark is delicacy: every song feels fragile. The track Made of Glass even has fragility as its subject – a friend who died of cancer left her a vase, which inspired this gently strummed meditation about breakable gifts. How You Kill Me is also full of pathos; "Just as I sing like a bird, you shoot me down for your fun," she accuses, over brushed cymbals and hypnotic bass. Waiting on the Heart is the most alt-country moment – Gelb has made free with the pedal steel and reverb, and it's a stunner. In fact, there's little here that doesn't make you wonder where Tunstall has been hiding all this beauty until now.
Four-star review from the UK Independent:
Quote:
KT Tunstall's fourth album is by some distance her best, offering a series of deeply-felt musings on mortality, mercy and memory. Recorded at Howe Gelb's Wavelab Studio in Arizona in two sessions separated by a season – hence the different titles for the separate “sides” – it reflects her response to the death of her father, the first side's sensitive, reactions gradually supplanted by a new emotional light as her branches become strong enough to “play with the wind” and “carry the snow” again.
Gelb's production is supremely simpatico, adding shadings of mellotron, piano, clarinet and strings as she progresses from the emotional transparency of “Made Of Glass” through to her own recovery. A touching, intelligent work.
Download: Made Of Glass; Feel It All; Yellow Flower; Honeydew