Natalie Merchant
Leave Your Sleep

THE REVIEW

After "Motherland", exactly in 2003, the Merchant breaks contracts with her record label to start a new journey with her label and new folk trends (partly already experimented in "Motherland"); this results in her taking a back seat in the European scene where, if not imported, her records have become difficult to find.

"Leave Your Sleep" is not just an album, but a thorough research work; in fact, the album (dedicated to childhood) practically retraces two hundred years of stories and poems for children from England and America. These five years of research have been collected in two CDs of thirteen tracks each (one CD of sixteen tracks for the European version), with the Merchant collaborating with about one hundred and thirty musicians such as Wynton Marsalis or Medeski Martin & Wood.

The album strongly feels jazz and folk influences, and each track carries evident characteristics both of the story and the song, indeed the reworking takes nothing away from the charm of the poets of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Although the atmosphere is no longer that of "Ophelia" or "Tigerlily", the music enriches itself with a certain refinement and a certain playfulness, not totally appreciable as the tales it draws inspiration from are mostly unknown to us, as they are not typical of our country.

In short, a pleasant album, well-studied from the thematic point of view and instrumental execution, the purchase of the reduced version is useless, always assuming it can be traced, because it is a work that needs to be listened to in its entirety.