Though the sunglasses were a bust, and Merchant was outbid on the couple of other things she’d been tempted by, the experience was a fascinating glimpse into the life of a woman that she’d come to see almost as some sort of kindred. Like Didion, Merchant is a prolific journal-keeper, often writing on current events and social critique relayed through some kind of personal connection or experience. 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! Murphy, John (April 14, 2023). "Natalie Merchant– Keep Your Courage". musicOMH . Retrieved April 14, 2023.

Dunne, Tom (April 13, 2023). "Tom Dunne: My six favourite albums of the year so far". The Irish Examiner . Retrieved April 13, 2023. 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. So I really stepped away from that way of life. But I felt that if she'd be going off to college, that I would suddenly have this massive expanse of time and space that I would want to fill, and I wouldn't want to feel alone, because it's a big transition when your child goes away to college. So those were some of the motivations. That lush, layered contralto voice can belong to only one person - Natalie Merchant, the one-time lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs, the multi-platinum creator of "Tigerlily," the environmentalist, film director, mother and artist in residence at a preschool. She does it all. She's out with her ninth solo album, "Keep Your Courage," and joins us now. Welcome to the show.

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Keep Your Courageis transcendent… a brilliant and long-awaited return of Natalie’s unmistakable voice.” – Michael Stipe Although she’s not entirely sure, given the pandemic’s weird way of compressing all of eternity, she thinks she started writing the songs for Keep Your Courage in September that year. Home from the hospital and confined with her piano, her journals, and decades’ worth of sketching, painting and unfinished songs, she got to work. The result, she says proudly, is an album about love in all its guises, “the journey of a courageous heart.” “It just seemed to make sense to me, after all that isolation,” she explains. “Whenever I’m in any kind of crisis, I play the piano. But I couldn’t even do that at the start of the pandemic because I couldn’t use my right hand for months. So when I say ‘keep your courage,’ I’m talking to myself as much as anyone.” Later, on songs like “Narcissus” and “Eye of the Storm”, love becomes a knottier concern. Everyone knows the cautionary tale of Narcissus, the hunter so fixated on his own beauty that he can’t look away from his own reflection, staring at it until death. But few remember his fate as divine retribution for his cruel rejection of the mountain nymph Echo, who, silenced with a curse, was at a loss to intervene as he fell in love with himself. Merchant’s passionate retelling gives life to Echo’s perspective, raging with helplessness and sorrow as Narcissus wastes away. “Love can be blissful, but it can also be dangerous, injurious,” she says. “I wanted to talk about all these different ways to experience it.” A literate, observant, thoughtful songwriter, champion of the dispossessed, admirer and interpreter of folk songs and sounds, and we hear that again on Keep Your Courage.’

One of those advances, she reveals, is when she gave birth to her daughter, Lucia, in 2003. “We had a beautiful, well-equipped and enlightened medical facility called the Birthing Centre, in which you could have any childbirth experience you wanted. It could be completely unmedicated, you could have your baby in a pool, you could have as many people as you want in the room, and you could have a surgical suite if things were going haywire. Those options didn’t exist when my mother had all four of her children. She was also completely anaesthetised – she doesn’t remember any of the births – and they handed her jars of formula milk when she walked out the door.” MERCHANT: (Singing) Tinctures, teas and your secret remedies and your voice like Buffy Sainte-Marie... Natalie Merchant performs 'Come On, Aphrodite' on 'GMA' ". Good Morning America. ABC News. June 20, 2023 . Retrieved June 21, 2023. Michael Stipe performs with Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs in 1993. Photograph: Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG/ Getty Images Motherhood had both expanded and shrunk that world but with her daughter having left for college in late 2021, Merchant is relishing being newly free again. “I’ve been able to rediscover myself as a creative person,” she says. “I feel like I can do anything I want.”

Set Times

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.

a b c d e Baltin, Steve (May 4, 2023). "Q&A: Natalie Merchant On Her New Music And Tour And the Next Wave Of Her Career". Forbes . Retrieved May 4, 2023.

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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.

MERCHANT: (Singing) Come on, Aphrodite. Can't you see that I've been patient? Come on, Aphrodite. Can't you see how long I've waited? The Feast Of Saint Valentine is simply gorgeous. What an incredible closing tune! Initially sparse in its chosen musical style and mix, when the music begins to build, every element becomes crystal clear thereby ensuring that The Feast Of Saint Valentine is a memorable closer that will compel you to play the album again. That is, of course, provided you don’t choose to put this magnificent song on repeat for it’s one of the best tunes from the album and one of the best songs Merchant has ever recorded. Keep Your Courage is the natural progression of that path. Working with seven different arrangers and over two dozen musicians, it’s not her biggest project – 2011’s Leave Your Sleep takes that crown with 135 players – but it is her most ravishing. Merchant has never been one to do things half-heartedly, but every note and detail here feels deeply considered in a way that goes beyond her own strict standards. “I don’t believe in filler,” she tells me, firmly. “I get accused of being not prolific, but I just believe in quality over quantity.” Dutchcharts.nl – Natalie Merchant – Keep Your Courage" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved April 21, 2023. These feature on Keep Your Courage, an album whose theme is love in its myriad guises. “Love will leave you wounded / love will bring you harm,” she sings on The Feast of St Valentine. “Love will be the curse and be the charm / Love will be the bruising and the balm.” The music melds traditional folk with chamber pop, lush orchestration and soul. “It’s almost as if I have to invent a new word to describe the music on this album,” says Merchant. “I don’t even know what to call it.”Nonesuch has announced Natalie Merchant’s first album of new songs in nearly a decade. Keep Your Courage is to be released on 14 April 2023. Keep Your Courage features two duets sung with Abena Koomson-Davis of Resistance Revival Chorus, plus contributions from the Celtic folk group Lúnasa and Syrian virtuoso clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, and horn arrangements by jazz trombonist Steve Davis. Along with nine original songs by Merchant, it includes an interpretation of “Hunting The Wren” by Ian Lynch of Lankum. 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. MERCHANT: How to eat properly. And the strange thing is, when I started with 10,000 Maniacs, I met them when I was 16. I think we formed the band when I was 17. We made our first record when I was 18. I remember we were in rehearsal one day and the bass player said, let's go to the bridge. And I was like, what's a bridge? I didn't even know the nomenclature. I didn't know how to even name the parts of a song. So I really learned everything through doing. I hope that people don't hold those records from the early '80s up to the work that I'm doing now.