Natalie Merchant: Leave Your Sleep

My college roommate was a huge Natalie Merchant fan, so that was my first real exposure to her music. I vaguely remember liking the sound, but for whatever reason, it didn't really stay in the forefront of my consciousness, and until this past weekend, I had sort of forgotten about her. But over the course of our studio weekend (which, by the way, was quite a success, more about that later), I spent some of the down time catching up on this month's Paste magazine, which did a feature article about Natalie and her upcoming project, Leave Your Sleep, and I was hooked. Critics are calling this her most ambitious album to date, spanning genres and featuring a vast entourage of collaborators (some 130 artists! wow!), including Wynton Marsalis, Lunasa and the Klezmatics, The Memphis Boys, and Medeski Martin & Wood.

The project began five years ago. Basically, the songs on the record are poems, mostly about childhood, ranging from obscure nursery rhymes and lullabies, to poems by British Victorians, mid 20th century Americans, and a few contemporaries as well. The poets are both well known and obscure, the better known ones including: Odgen Nash, E.E. Cummings, Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. The thing that really intrigued me is the sheer amount of historical research and curation involved in bringing this project about. Merchant hired three research assistants (what a cool gig that must have been!) to track down biographical information about the poets, and a fourth assistant to research photos. It sounds like quite an undertaking, but how inspiring! To not only be creating music, but unearthing obscure gems and preserving important history. The album will come in two versions: a "cheap and cheerful" 16 track CD and a 26 song edition that will include an 80 page book created based on the historical research. Part of the tour in support of this project will include a "library tour" starting at the New York Public Library that will be part performance and part lecture. Release date is April 13th on Nonesuch Records.