NATALIE MERCHANT - Leave Your Sleep

Here’s a clever victory in the battle to beat the throwaway download with the more precious CD product. Natalie Merchant has put together what can only be called a beautiful little work of art that has already had a friend regret doing the  download thing and missing the piece! What Merchant has done is to take 26 poems and put her own music to them. Yet, she couldn’t settle for that, she has put the two CDs into an 80 page hardback book where she not only prints the poems BUT adds a biography of all the writers, well researched. It is an intriguing little anthology with fascinating insights into poets and their poetry; hours of intrigue and interesting information. In her Introduction Merchant declares her belief about the poets: -

“Poets are keepers of the sacred language that describes our holy places – unknown and unknowable... The poet’s work is putting silence around everything worth remembering. Poetry on the page can be a little difficult to penetrate; sometimes it needs to be heard. I used music to enter these poems, and once inside I was able to understand how they were constructed with layers of feeling and meaning.”

In order to sneak inside the poems Merchant has used a variety of music genres and around 100 different musicians to garner the effect. With a voice that could seduce if she simply read the phone book her own art is an incredibly potent way to enter a very varied list of poets’ art. Beautiful, fascinating and educational and don’t be fooled by the download!

Comments

[Laura]

I adore this album, the idea behind it and the beautiful Natalie Merchant. However, I have had several songs replaying through my head constantly since first listening to it; take care or you'll find yourself loudly declaring "the bear was RAVENOUS" at the most inappropriate times!