Track Listing
Click tracks with speaker icon to listen| 1.01 | Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience | 5:11 |
| 1.02 | Equestrienne | 4:39 |
| 1.03 | Calico Pie | 2:42 |
| 1.04 | Bleezer's Ice-Cream | 5:17 |
| 1.05 | It Makes a Change | 3:31 |
| 1.06 | The King of China's Daughter | 2:39 |
| 1.07 | The Dancing Bear | 5:38 |
| 1.08 | The Man in the Wilderness | 3:45 |
| 1.09 | maggie and milly and molly and may | 4:09 |
| 1.10 | If No One Ever Marries Me | 2:22 |
| 1.11 | The Sleepy Giant | 3:20 |
| 1.12 | The Peppery Man | 5:06 |
| 1.13 | The Blind Men and the Elephant | 5:33 |
| 2.01 | Adventures of Isabel | 3:26 |
| 2.02 | The Walloping Window Blind | 4:17 |
| 2.03 | Topsyturvey-World | 5:10 |
| 2.04 | The Janitor's Boy | 3:52 |
| 2.05 | Griselda | 5:51 |
| 2.06 | The Land of Nod | 4:06 |
| 2.07 | Vain and Careless | 4:44 |
| 2.08 | Crying, My Little One | 2:28 |
| 2.09 | Sweet and a Lullaby | 3:05 |
| 2.10 | I Saw a Ship A-Sailing | 2:13 |
| 2.11 | Autumn Lullaby | 3:23 |
| 2.12 | Spring and Fall: to a young child | 3:07 |
| 2.13 | Indian Names | 5:52 |
News & Reviews
- Thursday, July 29, 2010
Natalie Merchant, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Rokia Traoré Perform at Cambridge Folk Festival
The 45th annual Cambridge Folk Festival gets under way tonight at Cherry Hinton Hall in Cambridge, England, and three Nonesuch artists are set to take the stage there this weekend: Natalie Merchant headlines Saturday night, Carolina Chocolate Drops perform both Saturday and Sunday, and Rokia Traoré performs on Sunday. BBC Radio 2 will broadcast highlights next Wednesday.
- Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Natalie Merchant Heads to UK, Releases iTunes Session of Reimagined Originals, Covers
Natalie Merchant's tour resumes in the US next week following a stop in the UK for the Cambridge Folk Festival this weekend. Fans on both sides of the Atlantic can now pick up an iTunes Session from Merchant with reimagined original music and cover songs. The Grand Rapids Press gives 3.5 of 4 stars to a recent show, full of "compelling songs, tight musicianship and Merchant's strong vocals."
About this Album
Leave Your Sleep, Natalie Merchant's first studio album since 2003’s The House Carpenter’s Daughter, released April 13, 2010, on Nonesuch Records. This release is the culmination of seven years’ research and collaboration and is, in Merchant’s words, “the most elaborate project I have ever completed or even imagined.” Take a look inside the album package at nonesuch.com/media.
A two-disc set, Leave Your Sleep is a collection of songs adapted from poems selected by Merchant including pieces by both well-known and obscure writers. Featured are works by British Victorians, early- and mid-20th century Americans and contemporary writers as well as anonymous nursery rhymes and lullabies. Among the authors included are Ogden Nash, E.E. Cummings, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christina Rossetti, Edward Lear, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Robert Graves.
In addition to a new method of lyricism, Merchant stretches out musically on Leave Your Sleep by collaborating with a broad spectrum of artists—some old friends, some she has admired from afar—including the Wynton Marsalis Quartet, Medeski Martin & Wood, members of the New York Philharmonic, The Klezmatics, Lúnasa and Hazmat Modine. “The sessions were recorded in live ensemble settings to capture a fresh and spontaneous energy,” notes Merchant. “They were some of the most magical experiences I’ve ever had making music.”
Having sold millions of records worldwide over the course of her recording career, Merchant has remained busy in the time since her last studio album by curating compilations for both 10,000 Maniacs’ Campfire Songs and her own Retrospective. Additionally, Merchant performed live to the accompaniment of Philip Glass, Dr. John, Pete Seeger, and Wynton Marsalis and collaborated with British composer Gavin Bryars as part of The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works series.
About the project, Merchant writes:
This new collection of songs, Leave Your Sleep, is my first studio album since 2003. It is the most elaborate project I have ever completed or even imagined.
I have always loved many different styles of music but had barely scratched the surface of those genres on my own recordings. This time in the studio I really wanted to experiment so I called on some of the most accomplished musicians in Cajun, bluegrass, reggae, chamber, and early music, jazz, and R&B, as well as Balkan, Chinese, and Celtic folk. Some were old friends and some were artists whose work I had admired from afar, such as The Wynton Marsalis Quintet; Medeski, Martin & Wood; The Klezmatics; members of the New York Philharmonic; Lúnasa; The Chinese Music Ensemble of New York; The Memphis Boys; Katell Keineg; and Hazmat Modine. The sessions were recorded in live ensemble settings to capture a fresh and spontaneous energy; they were some of the most magical experiences I’ve ever had making music.
The lyrics for Leave Your Sleep are another departure from the way I had written for the past 28 years. I decided to adapt poetry to music that had been created by other writers. I chose works by both well-known and obscure poets, ranging from anonymous nursery rhymes and lullabies to poems by British Victorians, early- and mid- 20th Century Americans, and a few contemporary writers. Ogden Nash, E.E. Cummings, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christina Rossetti, Edward Lear, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Robert Graves are among the most well known of the group.
It was exciting for me to work with rhythm and rhyme schemes by these poets, which I did over the course of four years. The poems inspired vastly different musical settings with themes that ranged from humorous and absurd to tragic, romantic, and deeply spiritual.
The recording took a full year to complete, involving 130 musicians. My co-producer was Andres Levin, who has worked with Marisa Monte, David Byrne, Carlinhos Brown, and Orishas. Leave Your Sleep was engineered by Nick Wollage, a British soundtrack recordist for such films as Atonement, Pride and Prejudice, Miss Potter, Gosford Park, and The Merchant of Venice. The mixing was done by the legendary Steven Rosenthal in his downtown Manhattan studio, The Magic Shop.
