Leave Your Sleep
Leave Your Sleep is the fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant. Produced by Merchant and Andres Levin, the double concept album is "a project about childhood" and is a collection of music adapted from 19th and 20th century British and American poetry about childhood. BBC Music describes it as "200 years of lyrical and musical history, washing beautifully by."
Inspiration
The sleeve notes credit inspiration for the songs of this album as follows:Adventures of Isabel – Ogden NashAutumn Lullaby – AnonymousBleezer's Ice-Cream – Jack PrelutskyCalico Pie – Edward LearCrying, My Little One – Christina RossettiIf No One Ever Marries Me – Laurence Alma-TademaIndian Names – Lydia Huntley SigourneyI Saw a Ship A-Sailing – AnonymousIt Makes a Change – Mervyn PeakeEquestrienne – Rachel FieldGriselda – Eleanor FarjeonMaggie and Milly and Molly and May – E. E. CummingsNursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience – Charles CausleySpring and Fall – Gerard Manley HopkinsSweet and a Lullaby – AnonymousThe Blindmen and the Elephant – John Godfrey SaxeThe Dancing Bear – Albert PaineThe Janitor's Boy – Nathalia CraneThe King of China's Daughter – AnonymousThe Land of Nod – Robert Louis StevensonThe Man in the Wilderness – AnonymousThe Peppery Man – Arthur MacyThe Sleepy Giant – Charles E. CarrylThe Walloping Window Blind – Charles E. CarrylTopsyturvey-World – William Brighty RandsVain and Careless – Robert GravesReception
BBC Music gave a review following the album's release:What’s astonishing is how cohesive it all is: from the fire-eyed, Celtic-tinged chamber music of Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience, through to the stark, troubled strings of the closing Indian Names, Leave Your Sleep never feels over-extended. The sheer ravishing beauty of the arrangements, combined with the tasteful, organic aesthetic, prevents things ever jarring, and Merchant’s voice flows constant throughout, supple and hard as silken steel. Indeed, everything sounds so good from a purely musical perspective that the record perhaps doesn’t showcase its lyricists as well as it could. It’s hard to really see that it cumulatively says anything about childhood, except perhaps that it's the lurid bits that stick with you – Charles E. Carryl’s faintly traumatic The Sleepy Giant is a piece of grotesque that's hard to ignore. But most of these poems simply sink into the verdant whole – 200 years of lyrical and musical history, washing beautifully by.