Keep Your Courage

Product Information

But what their new owner probably doesn’t know is that the shades were also briefly worn by Natalie Merchant – another American treasure – just the day before. Visiting the auction house in Hudson, New York, about a half-hour drive from where she lives, Merchant viewed the whole collection with a friend who just happens to be an English professor who’d had Didion as a student. I started writing songs, which I hadn't done in probably five years, and it seemed like the theme that just kept recurring was intimacy and risking intimacy. So that's what I started writing about. I think it was the isolation of the pandemic. [Laughs.] Written around the time of the MAGA insurrection, Merchant took heart in Whitman’s unwavering faith that a better America could emerge. “Although Jan 6 will always be a dark day, we’ve seen much darker days than that and Whitman lived through them,” she explains. AT THE VETS: An Evening with Natalie Merchant: Keep Your Courage Tour". Providence Performing Arts Center . Retrieved May 4, 2023.

Keep Your Courage is Natalie’s ninth solo studio album and the first of new material since her 2014’s self-titled record. An eclectic album, produced by Merchant, it features two duets sung with vocalist Abena Koomson-Davis (Resistance Revival Chorus), contributions from the Celtic folk group Lúnasa, Syrian virtuoso clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, and horn arrangements by jazz trombonist Steve Davis. There are lush orchestrations throughout by seven composers including: Gabriel Kahane, Stephen Barber, Colin Jacobsen, David Spear and Megan Gould. Keep Your Courage comprises nine original songs by Merchant as well as an interpretation of “Hunting the Wren” by Ian Lynch of the Irish band Lankum. I am not who I was then, thank god!” she says, laughing. “It’s a journey, and unfortunately a lot of my early journey as a writer is captured on discs and I cannot escape them. I wish I could put a disclaimer on them, like ‘These lyrics were written by an adolescent who didn’t know what the hell they were doing.’” Through its ten songs, Merchant explores themes of love and passion as essential to the human experience: “For the Greeks, when the spirit of love descended, it was seen as a kind of assault; you would become powerless against an all-consuming, sweet madness,” she says. “Amazingly, humans still crave it, in spite of the perils.”I loved working with Steve Davis. He's more of a jazz horn player. He's a trombone player. So he's really steeped in that jazz world. But I loved working with him because it wasn't all on paper. There was a lot of improvisation, and I could sing a line, and then it's so exciting when you sing a line and then the trumpet plays the line . . . [Laughs.] [sings trumpet line] That was a line that I kept singing to my guitar player. But when he played on the guitar with a slide or whatever, it didn't sound right, but when Steve took my guitar line and turned it into a horn section, that was what it was supposed to be. Lanaham, Tom (April 13, 2023). "Q&A with Natalie Merchant: On Her Old Collections and Her New One, Keep Your Courage". Paste . Retrieved April 14, 2023. Also my production style is very maternal. I'm also making sure, "Is everyone happy? Is anyone having a blood sugar crash? Does someone need to take a walk? Did someone not sleep enough last night?" Musicianship is really tied into physicality. When I see people flagging, they need food. Being a mom, I could just read the signs. [Laughs.] I know what's happening. I just scan the room and I can tell how much sleep or food everybody in the room has had. A little [pie] graph in my head.

Brandle, Lars (April 18, 2023). "Metallica Heading to U.K. Chart Summit With '72 Seasons' ". Billboard . Retrieved April 18, 2023. There’s a compelling earnestness to Natalie Merchant‘s voice. With her low baritone and careful annunciation, she always sounds knowledgeable and understanding. The former frontwoman of 10,000 Maniacs comes off as sincere and serious even when crooning about love in a lighthearted vein. The protagonists and narrators of her songs are aware that everything can come crashing down. Deception can come from oneself as well as the others in one’s life. La di da.Sister Tilly is a thoroughly relaxing sonic journey. You’ll find yourself closing your eyes and listening in a captivated manner for music should always sound this good, yet it seldom does. What a beautiful song! Manzoor, Safraz (April 18, 2023). " 'It made me wish I had made more records': Natalie Merchant on returning to music after losing her voice". The Guardian . Retrieved April 18, 2023. 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.

RASCOE: You were at a point where people could really hurt you when you love them, right? That's the deepest hurt, right? MERCHANT: I've had massive hits and sold lots of records, but I can walk into a store and hand someone my credit card and they can say, oh, you have the same name as a famous singer. I learn all the time from everybody. Gabriel has a lot of fanciful counterpoint going on that I normally would shy away from, because I would think it would be cluttered. But he's so skilled at it, that you're able to focus on both melodies at the same time and not be distracted from the lyrics, which I think is an amazing accomplishment. Richard, Sam (March 6, 2023). "Send us your questions for Natalie Merchant!". Uncut . Retrieved April 12, 2023.

And mostly, my encounters with people if they do recognize me is just, Ms. Merchant, I really appreciate your work or it's very meaningful to me. And that's really a lovely exchange to have, and to meet people who feel like we already have some kind of relationship established. Having raised her daughter alone since she was four and half, Merchant says she doesn’t mind being single at all. “Yes, it’s lovely to feel connected to another person, and I won’t lie, I love having sex. But I have lovely, deep friendships with so many people. I have my daughter. And I have this incredible, tangible response to beauty and art and nature, and I’m valuing those things more and more.” a b Horowitz, Steve (April 11, 2023). "Natalie Merchant: Keep Your Courage (Album Review)". PopMatters . Retrieved April 12, 2023. Benitez-Eves, Tina (August 17, 2023). "Natalie Merchant Keeping Her Courage". American Songwriter. ISSN 0896-8993. OCLC 17342741 . Retrieved August 17, 2023.