KT Rocks!

Who: KT Tunstall
What: The Drastic Fantastic Tour 2008
When: 27 March 2008, 8:00pm
Where: Suntec City Hall 603

Before the concert, I knew KT Tunstall from only one song: Black Horse And The Cherry Tree, the one where she goes "woo hoo" throughout. So I went into the concert not knowing much about her and what to expect.

And I must say that I was totally blown away at the end of the concert. She played the guitar for every song with such ease and her singing was top notch too. There aren't female many singer-songwriter-guitarists and she's one very good example. The best I've seen so far actually.

Compared to Colbie Caillat, whom I caught last week at Movida, KT wins by a mile. Where Colbie is more laid back and "pretends" to play the guitar once in a while, KT really works her socks off and put on helluva show.

She was charismatic, funny and in control all at once. I felt like I didn't even have to try to enjoy myself. I simply enjoyed myself. There are some gigs where you know the band quite well and many of their songs and lyrics, but somehow you still feel that you had to make an effort to enjoy the show, if you know what I mean. But enjoying KT's show was just effortless.

She was backed up by a 4-piece band with 2 backup singers and I felt that the sound quality wasn't too bad. I have heard so much about Suntec being a lousy place for concerts as the acoustics are known to be quite bad, but it sounded alright to me. She must have had good sound technicians.


The band was tight and not overly fanciful, which was good. I was especially impressed when KT played solo for Black Horse And The Cherry Tree. She used a loop pedal, a device that allowed her to record sounds from her guitar and voice microphone and loop the recorded stuff. SO she essentially became a one-woman band as she layered the different parts of the song together. She's a great multi-tasker!

I also especially enjoyed her quieter songs, where you could listen to her singing and displaying her guitar skills. It was mesmerising just listening to her play.

The venue was almost fully-packed (it wasn't that big a venue anyway) and more than half of the crowd consisted of Westerners. I was in the free standing area and the crowd was pretty responsive, moving to the beat and clapping their hands most of the time.

It was such a good show and you could tell that everyone had fun. I'm quite a fan of her now. She's so talented! Oh, and I couldn't keep my eyes off her chest too as it was too distracting...because she was wearing a T-shirt with MJ's eyes (from the Dangerous album cover) printed on it. Haha...


Tonight's gig was her only stop in Southeast Asia, and I must say we were really quite privileged to have her perform here. Well, she promised she'll be back, so if you didn't make it today, wait for her to come back again!

Here are some live performances of Black Horse And The Cherry Tree and also a cover of the Jackson 5's debut single, I Want You Back. In both, she uses the loop pedal to great effect. Super cool! (Yeah she's an MJ fan, maybe that's why I like her haha) Enjoy and be converted!