KT Tunstall announces her upcoming album, NUT, with new single, "Canyons"
Announced today, the seventh studio album from the Grammy®-nominated artist KT Tunstall is the last in a trilogy of albums she began recording and releasing in 2016. NUT will be released on September 9, 2022 via her new partnership with Blue Élan Records. KT describes the album name; “Growing up in Scotland, if someone was losing their temper you would say, ‘Dinny lose yer Nut!’ I love that the word also means a seed. The album artwork is all about the brain being a garden; you reap what you sow, you need to keep the weeds at bay, and there is an almost supernatural beauty to when things blossom.”
"I'm a dreamer, and I've always been a dreamer," she explains. "And to write lyrics, I have to allow myself to unhook from the day to day and go into this other realm. And I found that all through the pandemic, the present moment was holding on to the back of my shirt every minute and just would not let me go."
She found her writing groove thanks to "Canyons," a song propelled by a grimy, heavy rock riff. In keeping with NUT’s theme, the song's lyrics are about the canyon-like physiology of the brain, and explores the parallels between humans developing unique identities and the way nature evolves and is shaped over time. Elsewhere, NUT’s lyrics and sound delve into KT’s own personal evolution, and the way our selves evolve through the repetition of behaviors and life experience.
KT Tunstall has never been one for creative stasis. The Grammy®-nominated Scottish Musician burst onto the music scene with her 2004 multi-platinum debut, Eye to the Telescope, which spawned the global hits "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" and "Suddenly I See." These songs established Tunstall as a captivating and dynamic performer, as well as a Songwriter with a singular knack for balancing introspective folk and propulsive rock.
"There are two immediate, recognizable pillars of my style," she says. "I have this troubadour, acoustic guitar-driven emotional side. Then there's definitely an electrified rock side of my work with rawness and teeth."
After selling everything she owned and moving to California in 2015, she took a break before spending the next seven years on the album trilogy. She describes the first record, KIN, as “an absolute Phoenix out of the ashes," Tunstall says. "It was the result of a profound personal shift, and finding my feet again after facing some really hard truths." Among other things, Tunstall's father died—an event that made her realize she was unhappy in her marriage and led to divorce. More challenges awaited her upon the release of 2018's WAX. "Halfway through the tour for WAX, I completely lost my hearing in my left ear overnight, which never returned," she says. "I lost an extremely important physical part of my body whilst touring a record all about the body."
Tunstall was understandably wary about what might happen while making her mind record, NUT. And of course, it came in the form of a global pandemic. However, now that the trilogy is complete, she has the perspective to appreciate the solace and healing she experienced as the songs unfolded. "I did not expect to be essentially documenting such an intense personal journey," she says. "When I started, it was more observational fascination with the subject matter and a sense of personal interest. I did not foresee how visceral an experience it would be making this music about myself. It became the audio accompaniment to a deeply transformative period of my life. It's the soundtrack to me creating a new version of myself."
Each part of the trilogy relates to the three existential parts of ourselves; KIN = Spirit, WAX = Body, and NUT = Mind