Keep Your Courage

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Hunting The Wren shifts the tone to be one of a more melancholy approach than we’ve heard thus far. It’s haunting and will make you sit up and take notice but the boldness of the sonic experience ensures that the senses are heightened when listening to this memorable tune. Elsewhere, love goes all the way up to population level. Merchant is well known for dealing with social issues in her writing, but on Keep Your Courage she’s less explicit about it. Still, there’s no mistaking that, beneath the funky horns and orchestral brass, “Tower of Babel” is a song about a world growing ever more divided. More subtle is “Song of Himself”, which she explains is “all about Walt Whitman and his kind of radical, expansive love of America.” Later, on songs like “Narcissus” and “Eye of the Storm”, love becomes a knottier concern. Everyone knows the cautionary tale of Narcissus, the hunter so fixated on his own beauty that he can’t look away from his own reflection, staring at it until death. But few remember his fate as divine retribution for his cruel rejection of the mountain nymph Echo, who, silenced with a curse, was at a loss to intervene as he fell in love with himself. Merchant’s passionate retelling gives life to Echo’s perspective, raging with helplessness and sorrow as Narcissus wastes away. “Love can be blissful, but it can also be dangerous, injurious,” she says. “I wanted to talk about all these different ways to experience it.” Though the sunglasses were a bust, and Merchant was outbid on the couple of other things she’d been tempted by, the experience was a fascinating glimpse into the life of a woman that she’d come to see almost as some sort of kindred. Like Didion, Merchant is a prolific journal-keeper, often writing on current events and social critique relayed through some kind of personal connection or experience.

When you started writing songs again, was there any ramping up period? How did you find yourself writing differently this time around? The album is dedicated to the American writer Joan Didion, who in December 2021 died in the same week that Merchant recorded the vocals for Sister Tilly. The album’s most charming, least adorned song, it is a gorgeous rumination on the older women in Merchant’s life who influenced, inspired and politicised her, and who are now steadily dying. “Your feminist raves in your Didion shades, and your Zeppelin so loud and so proud,” sings Merchant. “Here’s to your days at the barricades, here’s to the girls in the fray, oh, how I wish you could stay.” The dedication is also, she says, “to all of Didion’s sisters”, the older women who “tend to be shoved aside. I don’t know how it is in Ireland, but in the US the feeling is along the lines of ‘Do us a favour and become invisible once you reach a certain age’. But these women I write about are vivid characters; they’re wise, intelligent, have an incredible amount of experience, and I turn to them for advice. It’s really heartbreaking they’re leaving us.” Watch: Natalie Merchant Shares Video for "Big Girls," From Her New Album, 'Keep Your Courage' ". Nonesuch Records . Retrieved April 17, 2023. Murphy, John (April 14, 2023). "Natalie Merchant– Keep Your Courage". musicOMH . Retrieved April 14, 2023.Nonesuch has announced Natalie Merchant’s first album of new songs in nearly a decade. Keep Your Courage is to be released on 14 April 2023. Stewart, Alison (March 30, 2023). "Listen: Natalie Merchant on WNYC's 'All of It with Alison Stewart' ". All of It. WNYC . Retrieved March 31, 2023– via Nonesuch Records. Rather than living in a state of wistful longing for love, Merchant feels complete with what she has. "It’s almost like your beloved is in you all the time and you just project your beloved onto a passing stranger. You can basically fall in love with anybody, especially if you want to be blind to their faults. You know, every time I’ve been in love, my first impression of the person was the most honest. But then it’s like you fall under a spell: I can change this person! My love can fix them!” Finan, Eileen (September 23, 2023). "Why Natalie Merchant Felt 'Grateful' After Losing Her Voice— And How Singing Is 'Better Than Ever' ". Lifestyle > Health. People . Retrieved September 26, 2023. a b Horowitz, Steve (April 11, 2023). "Natalie Merchant: Keep Your Courage (Album Review)". PopMatters . Retrieved April 12, 2023.

Guardian Angel lifts the senses following the tonal shift of Hunting The Wren and while it’s a rather simple composition, it allows Merchant’s delicate vocals to reach every aspect of your soul. Merchant is so clear and present, in the mix, that your speakers will disappear and should you close your eyes, you’d swear she is in the room with you. Plus, the musical interlude around the midway point is nothing short of incredible. Guardian Angel is a true masterpiece in every sense of the word. Natalie Merchant has announced that her ninth studio album, Keep Your Courage, will be released by Nonesuch on April 14. It’s her first album of new material since 2014’s self-titled record. I have been a persistent fan of Natalie Merchant for several decades – but this may be the best album she has ever made.With classically precise arrangements and production, elegantly poetic lyrics and emotionally stirring vocals she takes us on a unique and memorable journey.’ Naturally, her health problems have had an effect, too. “That sort of woke me up to the fact that maybe I don’t have as long as I thought," she says. "Maybe it isn’t thirty years anymore, maybe it’s like fifteen, or ten, or five, or I might die tomorrow. And so I’m beginning to see the end of the road. It’s not that far away when most of the journey is behind you.”Dunne, Tom (April 21, 2023). "Tom Dunne: Learning at the feet of the great Ms Natalie Merchant". The Irish Examiner . Retrieved April 21, 2023. MERCHANT: (Singing) Tinctures, teas and your secret remedies and your voice like Buffy Sainte-Marie...

It's amazing how you can play a song before lunch and have a complete attitude change after lunch. And it'll affect tempo, it'll affect everything. And sometimes you just need to know when's the right moment to abandon a song and come to it another time. a b Richards, Sam (June 2023). "An Audience With... Natalie Merchant". Uncut. pp.14–16. ISSN 1368-0722. Keep Your Courageis transcendent… a brilliant and long-awaited return of Natalie’s unmistakable voice.” – Michael Stipe One day in late 1980, Merchant – who was still only 16 – went to an open mic audition in her home town, improvising lyrics based on a book she had bought earlier from a charity shop. “I had smoked some pot,” she reasons. The others were impressed enough to ask her if she wanted to be their singer; Merchant graduated aged 18 and joined the band, later named 10,000 Maniacs.These songs are alchemy in the highest form possible.We all need to be reminded that such beauty exists.” – Valerie June These songs are alchemy in the highest form possible.We all need to be reminded that such beauty exists.’ Keep Your Courage" album by Natalie Merchant (Nonesuch) One of the things I really loved is you said the album is "a song cycle that maps the journey of a courageous heart." What drew your writing in that direction and when did you realize that's what you had landed on?

But also the production. I've had less opportunities to perfect that, because I only make a record every five years. But it feels like this is the culmination of all those recording projects I've ever been involved in. I'm really proud of the production on this record. I think it's the best-sounding record I've ever made. RASCOE: That's singer songwriter Natalie Merchant. Her latest album, "Keep Your Courage," is coming out this week. Thank you for joining us. Keep Your Courage debuted on the mid-week UK Albums Chart at 14, [35] but ended up placing 58 when the chart was published.Merchant didn’t write and record any new material thanks to the demands of motherhood. “Lyric writing demands solitude and when I am in that state there is no eating, no stopping. I won’t leave the house for days until it’s done,” she says. “I did not want to do that to my daughter. I did not want to be one of those artists that valued my work more than my child. I thought if I never make another record, she is the accomplishment on my deathbed.” Her spinal condition seemed to make the decision final. He's the first chair violinist, but he's also a violinist in Brooklyn Rider, and his brother plays cello. But they also do a lot of work with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. So anyway, I got connected with them through that concert, and they're doing my Lincoln Center shows. But then Colin did an arrangement for the album too. He did "Guardian Angel." Turning our attention to the visual senses and one finds the album’s artwork to be truly unique. Merchant normally appears on her cover art design, but the Joan of Arc statue certainly plays into the album’s title as well as much of the lyrical context throughout. The chosen design, with the coloured elements in the lower left-hand corner, is intriguing for I can’t fathom their purpose or meaning, but they simply work. Without them, the album cover would have been a little visually dull in its monochromatic state. MERCHANT: (Singing) Come on, Aphrodite. Can't you see that I've been patient? Come on, Aphrodite. Can't you see how long I've waited? What did you learn from working with all those people then? Did they teach you anything, or what takeaways did you have from working with all those different people?