Natalie Merchant's new album celebrates childhood and literature

Natalie Merchant

Natalie Merchant

Natalie Merchant says her original idea for a new album after a seven-year absence from music seemed like "a recipe for disaster."

"You know, artist goes away from the public eye for several years, has a child, and comes back with a children's record. I wouldn't even be interested in that."

The resulting album, "Leave Your Sleep," isn't a children's album - although that was the jumping off point.

"Originally, I thought I was going to make an album of lullabies based on Christina Rossetti's poetry," says Merchant in a call from a Phoenix hotel before a concert. "But it grew into a large thematic work about childhood and poetry and an introduction to music. I thought about it as an introduction to poetry and music for my daughter. It would live and breathe during her childhood and would later be a memento of childhood. ... She was in the room for so much of the writing and recording of it."

Merchant first made musical waves in the the 1980s with the band 10,000 Maniacs and followed in the 1990s with a successful solo career, beginning with the hit album, "Tigerlily." "Leave Your Sleep," available in both one- and two-disc editions, features Merchant adapting poems by Ogden Nash, Robert Graves, Robert Louis Stevenson, e.e. cummings and many other authors into songs. The disc comes with a booklet featuring photographs of the poets and biographical information.

"Doing the research on the poetry itself and the lives of the poets and finding images of all of them just added wonderful depth to the project that I haven't had before," she says.

Merchant says she did do research for her last album, "The House Carpenter's Daughter," which was a collection of folk songs, but nothing as extensive as for "Leave Your Sleep."

Merchant says her daughter loved the project. Irish, reggae and classical musicians all came to record for the project and Merchant's daughter was often there.

"She'll have memories and associations with this music and these musicians for the rest of her life, probably," says Merchant.

Merchant says that several musical memories stand out from her own childhood.

"My grandfather played several instruments and we went to church, the organ and the choral music made a big impression. I went to summer camp ... experiences with hippie girls with flowery dresses and long hair and guitars teaching me folk songs."

Merchant says a music class in second grade, though, made a particular impression. She said she was recently singing a couple of the Hebrew songs she'd learned in second grade and two Israeli members of her band recognized them - despite her mangled Hebrew.

She says poems, including Gerald Manley Hopkins "Spring and Fall to a Young Child" and "Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience" by Charles Causley, express the intent of the album.

"Childhood is about joy and wonderment, but it's also about trepidation and fear and deflowering. ... Especially in a society where it's difficult to control exposure to harsh realities. Maybe I'm being ridiculous. In Victorian times maybe you all slept in the same room and you could hear your parents having sex and grandma dying of consumption in the corner and you had to get up at six o'clock in the morning to go work in the factory! Maybe it's a recent phenomenon that we think children should have this golden era of childhood and should be sheltered and protected. A lot of people don't have that luxury still."

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