Album review: KT Tunstall, Invisible Empire//Crescent Moon (Virgin)

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