Scottish singer/songwriter KT Tunstall has decided to strike while the iron is hot. Only about a year and a half after the stateside release of her debut album Eye to the Telescope, she's made her best attempt to stay fresh on our minds with her sophomore release, the amusingly titled Drastic Fantastic. Normally, such an approach would inspire skeptical comments about the typical rushed second album that flops, but you know what, most of the songs from her first album are several years old now. We Yanks just got on the boat late. So I think it was definitely the right time. But there's one problem - it still feels a bit undercooked.

Here's the thing about KT - she seems to be a poppy rocker at heart with a folksy, acoustic undercurrent in her softer songs, and while you could probably name about a billion other young troubadors with that same approach, KT seemed unique due to her love for grooves that were built from the ground up. Her earlier live performances showed an ability to reconstruct a track from her album using little other than her guitar, her voice, and a looping pedal affectionately referred to as "Wee B@st@rd". Even on the softer tracks that weren't based around a percussive vibe, the timing was everything. She had a soulful inflection to her vocals and melodies that I really enjoyed. True, Eye to the Telescope had a couple of bland pop songs, and a few sleepier moments, but the unique strengths definitely outweighed the weaknesses.

And now, with Drastic Fantastic, it feels like she's started to blend into the crowd. I can't say that I've seen a more misleading title (or album cover!) in many years - this album represents a change that is neither drastic nor fantastic, and it's not the gutsy rocker you'd expect from the silly picture of KT with her shiny electric guitar and glitzy white outfit on the front sleeve. I don't mean to imply that KT had to "rock out" on her second album to be legitimate, but at the very least, I'd expect something a little more left-of-center than the mostly pleasant and sometimes catchy pop/rock record that I'm getting. I get occasional glimpses of the groove-building KT I was introduced to a couple years ago, but I can't shake the feeling that she's trying a little too hard to fit into the confines of radio-friendliness... and missing her target by about 10 years. 'Cause this is totally the kind of album that would have been likely to hit it big, or at least win KT an Alanis Morissette also-ran award (alongside the likes of Meredith Brooks) circa 1998.

OK, that sounds a little mean. I shouldn't be so hard on KT, because I do still enjoy a lot of her songwriting. She might sometimes fall prey to the typical relationship drama, but she's also a keen observer of her own weaknesses, and a few of her more abstract, metaphorical lyrics really stand out on this disc. I'll also give her credit for being more up-tempo this time around and saving the album's sleepier moments for the end - Eye to the Telescope frequently prompted coffee breaks during its mellow midsection. Now, when she goes mellow and acoustic, I pay more attention because it's not her default mode. The default mode in question is found in a lot of the more upbeat stuff - it has a rock base to it, but flies by in more of a breezy manner on several occasions, with only a few songs letting KT's more gritty and angular sensibilities take over. I suppose I'll just chalk that up to growing pains. The bottom line is that even when she's nearly lost touch with her more soulful side, she's still worth a listen.

Little Favours
This science sets easy, so peacefully
Like the skin, like the skin upon your body...
A nice little smack from the drums gets things going with a little attitude as KT lays down an odd chord sequence that brilliantly shifts from minor to major key once she arrives at the chorus. It gives the verses a tense feeling of KT taunting you and chasing you down, while the chorus has a much more relaxed melody, and I love how she executes the changes back and forth between the two moods. Right away, this is a much better opener than the rather subdued track that led off Eye to the Telescope, but aside from the tricky melody, it's still fairly standard pop/rock - a good example of KT's throaty vocal style, but not as gripping of a re-introduction as it could have been. She seems to be begging with a lover who has grown distant here - asking him to do her the "little favour" of sweeping her away to someplace where they can be alone, where they can't ignore each other. She describes the distance between them as a "little universe between our backs", which she repeats several times at the end of the song - is it just me, or is KT infatuated with the word "universe"?

If Only
Walking around in a daze
Out for days now
Talking it up as amazing
A maze that I'm in...
A bit of discordant guitar trickery leads off another up-tempo song that aims to be even catchier than the first - almost obnoxiously so, in my opinion. Again, I like what KT's doing with her melodies - taking a breezy pop tune and adding darker shades as she sidewinds her way through it. There's a bit of subtle wordplay in the verses that finds KT using homonyms and alliteration to her advantage - I love the way that the line "You're looking like you're looking for something" rolls of the tongue, even if it is a bit of unnecessary verbiage. It's the chorus that derails me here, with the main hook being the too-obvious pun "If only it was only me now". The double meaning of "only" isn't really strong enough to make that stand out as a bit of clever songwriting, and the incessant background vocals repeating "If only" only serve to up the annoyance factor a bit. The bridge, in which KT repeats the word "silence" about eleven times, needs a bit of retooling, too. I still enjoy the song and find the tune lodging itself in my head, but it's not the quirky breakout hit that it clearly wants to be.

White Bird
Half of you is heavenly
Showing off your purity
The rest of you is from the street
Like to laugh where they both meet...
The acoustic tune is a bit of an oddity - it's unpolished enough that you can hear the little squeaks as KT's fingers move from chord to chord in a fast, addictive picking pattern, and the whole thing's played in a mellow enough fashion that you'd expect a ballad, but her words are kind of rushed, so there's a bit of an ironic flavor to it. Personally, I've grown to love this song now that I've gotten used to it, but it took some time to appreciate the odd metaphor that KT bases the song around (which I still don't fully understand) - she's singing about a white bird with a black tail. Perhaps it's an ominous plane in the sky that could be spying on her, or perhaps it's a poised celebrity with an insidious dark side - she muses on what both colors of this bird's coat mean, indicating that there's an unholy mix of purity and sin to be found if one looks carefully. As far as interpreting KT's lyrics goes, this one's not as baffling as "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree", but then, few songs are.

Funnyman
With no one to lose, you said you feel like a bruise
On a beautiful body
And all the damage you do is so honest and true
I don't want to feel sorry for you...
There's a dull, deliberately muffled electric guitar intro at the beginning of this song, which made me want to hate it pretty much right away, but fortunately, KT infused the rhythm with just enough bounce and the lyrics with just enough intrigue to make this one of my favorite songs on the album. The murkiness is deliberate - evoking the feeling of a rainy day viewed through a window from inside a dark house, and it's like KT is visiting that house's inhabitant, trying to counsel that person and get him out of his funk. She describes him as a bit of a comedian who seems to be distraught for some unknown reason - it's like he knows how to make other people laugh, but he can't cheer himself up. Perhaps he feels like his tendency to be bluntly honest only pushes people away from him, but then she seems to indicate that she refuses to join the pity party because she thinks his talent might bring some things to light that the rest of the world doesn't want to talk about - it's uncomfortable comedy, but it's good for the soul. Maybe I'm just projecting some of my own feelings onto the song, but in any case, this conflicted character managed to get my attention, and so I'm bummed when after two well-phrased verses and choruses, the song dutifully bounces along to a lackluster ending rather than reaching any sort of a climax. Well, the first two minutes or so were solid anyway.

Hold On
Say you to me, "You're a bird with an eye for anything shiny"
Searchin' the land for a hero of a man
You say I need more than my fair share of attention
But I think you know that just isn't so...
The first thing you're probably gonna think when you hear this one, at least if you're familiar with KT's breakout single, is that this is an obvious attempt to recreate the success of "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree". It's certainly got the same "guitar as percussion" vibe going for it, and it's the song that would most easily fit KT's one-woman band style if performed live with the looping pedal. But this one's a bit different in that it has more of a frenetic pace and more insistent drums - plus the primary guitar in the song is electric. It's gonna be hard to beat "Black Horse", but KT has a lot of fun trying here, with looping vocals that chase herself back and forth as she imparts this little nugget of wisdom: "Hold on to what you been given lately, hold on to what you know you got." Alright, so that's not very meaningful. The final sentiment that "The world will turn if you're ready or not" makes things a bit more interesting, and the verses offer a bit more to unravel, though mostly the point of this song seems to be that it's a fun jam to play on rhythm guitar.

Hopeless
Well I'm just discovering I'm living in a different body
Caught a little insight into everything that's happening to me
Like a little spider, I'm climbing the insurmountable
But I'll never hold myself accountable, no...
Still upbeat, but more relaxed, is this self-deprecating song that sort of saunters by without leaving as much of an impression on me. I can't quite put my finger on what I dislike about it - maybe it's too easygoing to really match up with KT's gritty analysis of her tendency to hold out false hope for things that don't have snowball's chance in hell of actually happening? It's actually a pretty well-written lyric, and the melody has its share of moody ups and downs, so I should like this a great deal. Something needs to be done with tempo or the rhythm or whatever to give it a bit more punch, though.

I Don't Want You Now
So now you learned to make your bed
Far be it from me to be the one to pat your head
Truth is, you know, I could have pulled you home
But you already advertised that I had slashed the tires of your one man show...
KT channels a bit of the "angry femme-rocker" vibe during this song, and this is the one that really causes me to think, "This would have been huge in the late 90's". It's frenetically upbeat and in your face, though in more of a poppy way than a hard-edged, "You Oughta Know" sort of way - KT is clearly giving an unwanted suitor a blunt kiss-off here, but she's doing it with a bit of a smirk on her face. (Is that a kazoo I'm hearing during the segue from the chorus into the second verse? Way to taunt the guy!) I can't really award many points for a song that can't come up with a more clever way to tell someone to buzz off than, "Please don't try to be my friend again", so in the end, this song is only fun when I turn my brain off for a few minutes.

Saving My Face
Feel like a big old stone
Standing by a strength of my own
But every time the morning breaks
I know I'm closer to falling...
They went and made this one a single, too? Alright, I suppose I can see that. It's another one of those upbeat, poppy tunes that will breeze right by you and that sounds really good when you're flying down the highway without a care in the world (alright, so the lyrics have more than a few cares in the world, but if it's on mainstream Top 40 radio, the intent isn't for you to be paying attention to those), but on a musical level, this is all a bit nondescript compared to the kinds of songs I know KT can come up with. It's basically about arriving at a point where you feel that luck, faith, whatever fates you prefer to believe in have failed you, and you only have your own intuition to go on. Something like that. It's all a bit vague. You'll find me singing along to it on a good day, but it's not a song that I ever really connect with.

Beauty of Uncertainty
Night is an adder, hidden in grass
She bites like her life depends on it
And waits to see how long you last...
Now here's a song that sort of fascinates me. It slowly unwinds with the acoustic delicacy of a "Silent Sea" and the moody caution of a "False Alarm", and to be honest, it'll probably bore a lot of the folks who are in it for the poppier songs, but I don't care about that, because this is one of KT's stronger compositions. She sings some of the lowest notes I've ever heard from that uniquely lovely voice box of hers as she slowly picks out the notes in 6/8 time, playing it mellow when you know she's like a snake waiting to strike - and she does so not with fury, but with an unexpectedly beautiful crescendo near the end of the song, where she finally gains acceptance and delights in "the beauty of uncertainty" as she sings that line over and over. This song is on the longer side (close to five minutes), which is uncommon for KT, but it's the twists and turns of the melody that make it work.

Someday Soon
And as I put my words away, the flow slows
See this pen in a stream, picking it up is easy....
The album backs off from its edgier tendencies here and never really returns. I don't mind a pleasantly picked acoustic tune like this one, especially when it comes floating in so effortlessly and demonstrates KT's nimble finger skills. But you can probably tell from the title that KT's gonna be singing about the vaguest of vagueries. (I probably made that word up. Either that, or Andrew Bird did.) And that's basically how this song rolls - it juxtaposes oddly specific metaphors like "Wear my feather headdress like an Indian chief" with a really general wish to hopefully find something solid someday. There are times when I really wonder what would happen if we banned the usage of the word "some" in all songwriting, period. Because it's one of my least favorite words.

Paper Aeroplane
And when I build you a steeple
You say it's incomplete
'Cause you need the whole cathedral
To satisfy the need...
Some pretty flutes or woodwinds or whatever they are join KT on this, her most delicate of songs, floating about on the air currents and looking for a place to land. Though her demeanor is calm, she seems to be reaching out to an individual who is never satisfied, asking him what it's gonna take to finally overcome his skepticism. It's well-written, but coming right after the last two tracks, which were fairly mellow as well, it sort of ends the album with the whimper, and that'd be OK if the overall mood and image portrayed by the album hadn't promised a bang.

If KT wants to spend an album rocking out, or spend it quietly ruminating over a gently picked acoustic guitar, or both, that's honestly fine with me. She has a certain melodic gift that makes her aggressive side and her mellow side equally appealing. The problem I have is when she tries to apply that gift to more of a middle-of-the-road pop/rock setting - that's when she doesn't stand out from the pack enough to really establish herself. This is certainly a fixable problem, but time will tell. She could shoot for something more unique next time around, or she could set her sights on being the next Sheryl Crow - an achievable goal, no doubt, but certainly not a commendable one.

ALBUM WORTH:
Little Favours $1.50
If Only $1
White Bird $1.50
Funnyman $1.50
Hold On $1.50
Hopeless $.50
I Don't Want You Now $.50
Saving My Face $.50
Beauty of Uncertainty $1.50
Someday Soon $1
Paper Aeroplane $1
TOTAL: $12

Website: http://www.kttunstall.com

Recommended: Yes