Artist:  Natalie Merchant
Title:  Leave Your Sleep
Label:  Nonesuch Records

Children's poetry and the search for truth …

What happens when we die? That's a big question. For Natalie Merchant, it was big enough that when her young daughter began pondering this and other weighty concerns, the multi-platinum artist turned a planned lullaby record into a massive reflection on childhood. "I wanted to be able to answer those questions musically," Merchant recently told Billboard. In an effort to do so, she turned to the children's poetry of e.e. cummings, Mother Goose, Ogden Nash, Christina Rossetti and Robert Louis Stevenson, among many others—primarily 19th and 20th century British and American writers, both prominent and obscure.

After committing five years to research and composing songs, Merchant had written music for more than 50 of her newly favorite poems and lullabies. She then spent a year recruiting more than 130 of the most respected musicians from numerous genres, including The Fairfield Four, The Wynton Marsalis Quintet, Medeski, Martin & Wood, Irish folk act Lúnasa, The Klezmatics, The Chinese Music Ensemble of New York, and members of the New York Philharmonic. Envisioning a double-CD set, Merchant recorded 26 of the poem-songs with their prolific help.

Produced by Merchant and urban-fusion maestro Andres Levin (David Byrne, Common), Leave Your Sleep is her first studio album since 2003. (Merchant has also released an alternate "mini-version" of Leave Your Sleep, which nixes most of the lullabies and a few other tracks resulting in a 16-song disc.) As might be expected, this is a world music recording with a Euro-American foundation. Merchant delivers instantly timeless collaborations here and the classic nature of the music is pervasive. The sounds are vibrant, moody, imaginative and often fun with Merchant's signature vocals an ideal fit. For "Calico Pie," the New York-native dives into a fiddle, banjo, and upright bass party as she channels the deep South. The reggae-infused ‘Topsyturvey-World,' meanwhile, is a throwback to her former band 10,000 Maniacs. Merchant revels in late '60s Britpop for "It Makes a Change" one moment and another goes the lonely folk-ballad route with "If No One Ever Marries Me."

While Merchant includes gentle lullabies and other lighthearted fare, Leave Your Sleep is hardly a Disney album. Consider the girl who ran off with "The Janitor's Boy"; "The Peppery Man" who fumed and gnashed his teeth; "The Sleepy Giant" who ate boys; and the "Adventures of Isabel" who ate a vicious bear, turned a witch into milk and drank her, and then cut a giant's head off. Try singing those to little Bucky and then having him say his bedtime prayer. Indeed, these songs accomplish many things, not the least of which is sparking more questions than they answer.


**This review first published on April 26, 2010.