KT Tuntstall gets into character at Moore Theater

Special to The Seattle Times

She's basically an actor, this KT Tunstall.

Fans pay the medium-big bucks (around $35) for concerts because of her songs, but also for the character she puts on between them. Specializing in conversational improv comedy that's at turns tough and tender, she talks a lot to her audiences and they revel in her joyfully flippant viewpoint-- which most Americans register as "UK cheekiness"-- at least as much as the music.

For example, addressing a sold-out crowd at The Moore theater last Saturday, the Scottish singer-songwriter continually stereotyped Washington State and the crowd ate it up.

You could practically hear her eyes good-naturedly rolling when she described the scene of her recent and brief "holiday in Port Townsend" a place which she said is populated by "hippies that somehow made a lot of money".

After dropping this non-fact, she played hippie and mimed surprise at accidentally becoming rich. The audience-- mostly thirtysomething couples with a sizeable lesbian contingent-- was definitely picking up what she was putting down.

She may only have been rounding up to the most comfortable stereotype-- Port Townsend is far more Raymond Carver-esque than Tunstall's fantasy-- but her audience didn't seem to mind being labeled so long as it was semi-congratulatory. Plus, there was a conspiratorial air to her assessments that made her appear versed in the Northwest's inside jokes.

Even if what she says doesn't make sense, Tunstall is hard not to laugh with.

And her music sounded great-- her band seemed like crack studio musicians. Guys on stand-up bass, acoustic guitar (and mandolin), harmonium (reed organ) and washboard, drums (and cajon) added Bluegrass-flavored sepia tone to Tunstall's pop compositions, and her own downstroke-heavy acoustic strumming did, too.

Galloping groove-strumming undercut everything else and gave most songs a pumped up Jack Johnson feel. Tunstall's legitimately majestic voice mixed the hard flintiness of Mellissa Etheridge with Feist's soft vibrato. People danced in their seats like noodles and slyly made out with each other.

Later, Tunstall made more flattering judgments about Seattleites. Playing up the local legend that people here are less vain than in the rest of the world, she said, apropos of nothing, "I bet Seattle has no plastic surgery under their polar fleeces".

"Come to Starbucks and we'll give you a free latte!" screamed a woman, confusedly throwing another log onto the stereotype fire in desperation to connect with the attractive and witty Ms. Tunstall.