Live Review: KT Tunstall sparkles at Dublin's Academy

Most of us have seen The Devil Wears Prada at least once in our lives. “Suddenly I see/why the hell you mean so much to me,” a young KT Tunstall croons during its now-iconic opening credits, over a very mid-2000s montage of a frumpily-dressed Anne Hathaway stumbling her way through the headquarters of a fictional high-end fashion magazine. It didn’t feel anachronistic at the time, but after attending Tunstall’s magnetic show Sunday at Dublin’s The Academy venue, it strikes me that both she and her music couldn’t be farther from the film. Onstage, she wore an understated sparkly loose tee and dangling earrings that glinted in the lights, but she didn’t need the glitter to keep all eyes on her.

Despite her name on the billing, Tunstall’s show was as much about the other members of her band as it was about her. Her bassist Seye Adelekan (pronounced Shay-uh, as he clarified in a South London drawl) opened the show with a beautiful short set of barely-released music. This is not Seye’s big break, it’s far from it: Seye has been the bassist for Gorillaz since 2017, as I quickly found trying to find his music between sets. He’s played for hundreds of thousands of people in massive arenas, and yet his set feels as far away from that world as possible. His soft vocals were accompanied by just two guitars, and I found myself transfixed as he sang about love and yearning.

At last, Tunstall takes the stage, immediately comfortable in the lights as she bursts right out of the gate with her guitar in hand, launching into the synth heavy 'I Am A Pilot' off her most recent album, Nut. She’s greeted by a slightly lacklustre crowd, but quickly the gap between them and Tunstall diminishes down to nothing. The 48-year-old Edinburgh native proves a hilarious host, telling stories about therapy and Stevie Nicks between songs with her dry Scottish humour. She’d been so comfortable and down to earth that it was easy to forget that I wasn’t watching a friend play at a local bar’s open mic. The room feels safe as the audience laughs and sways along to her lively, playful set.

Her music was bursting with brilliant, intricate arrangements, her gorgeous raspy tone accompanied by witty lyrics over quick-tempoed guitar-driven songs, making good use of all instruments onstage. 'Demigod' and 'Push That Knot Away' in particular got the crowd going, their grooviness and the energy from the stage making it very difficult not to dance along with the band. Delightfully, Seye is back, and he’s now armed with the very bass he plays on tour with Gorillaz, even though the music he’s playing is drastically different from the Damon Albarn project's electro-alt-pop niche.

Tunstall bridged the gap between more genres than I can count on one hand. The music nerd in me was trying to place it the entire set (sort of folk-pop with clear indie roots and country influences?) before it occurred to me about halfway through that genre-defying was the point. She truly understands pop music, and she knows how to make it weird without sacrificing what makes it tick.

The set's tempo ebbed and flowed; high energy bangers were followed by beautiful acoustic arrangements that had me scrambling to add the songs to my playlist. She mentioned the loss of her loop pedal this tour, coyly declaring that now was the time to prove that humans are better than machines. And in this case, they are: her, Seye and drummer Andy Burrows’ groovy rendition of her song 'Black Horse And The Cherry Tree' has the room stomping and singing along.

She avoided 'Suddenly I See' until the last possible moment, ending the encore with a lovely rendition of the hit that included a breakdown in which she thanked each member of her crew by name. Tunstall seemed intent on reminding us that her entourage is as much of her act as she is, and it’s a refreshing amount of humility that implies her personality is as lovely as her musical abilities.

“This is the crowd you dream of when you put out a record,” KT professed to us at the end of the show, having delivered personality and talent to every inch of the room.

You can listen to KT Tunstall's latest album, Nut, below.