“Leave Your Sleep” is Natalie Merchant\\\'s first studio
album since 2003’s The House Carpenter’s Daughter.
This release is the culmination of six years of research
and collaboration and is, in Merchant’s words, “The most
elaborate project I have ever completed or even
imagined.”
Available as a two-disc set and 1disc (this version being the 2disc set), “Leave Your Sleep”is a collection of songs adapted from poems selected by
Merchant including pieces by both well-known and
obscure writers. Featured are works by British Victorians,
early- and mid-20th century Americans and contemporary
writers as well as anonymous nursery rhymes and
lullabies. Among the authors included are Ogden Nash,
E.E. Cummings, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christina
Rossetti, Edward Lear, Gerard Manley Hopkins and
Robert Graves.
Natalie Merchant was the original lead-singer for the alt
rock band 10,000 Maniacs which she joined in 1981.
Merchant left the band in 1993 after releasing more than
five albums with the band, to purse a very successful solo
career.
Tracks:
Disc 1:
1. Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and
a
Experience
2. Equestrienne
3. Calico Pie
4. Bleezer\\\'s Ice-Cream
5. It Makes a Change
6. The Dancing Bear
8. The Man in the Wilderness
9. Maggie and milly and molly and may
10. If No One Ever Marries Me
11. The Sleepy Giant
12. The Peppery Man
13. The Blind Men and the Elephant
Disc 2:
1. Adventures of Isabel
2. The Walloping Window Blind
3. Topsyturvey-World
4. The Janitor\\\'s Boy
5. Griselda
6. The Land of Nod
7. Vain and Careless
8. Crying, My Little One
9. Sweet and a Lullaby
10. I Saw a Ship A-Sailing
11. Autumn Lullaby
12. Spring and Fall: to a young child
13. Indian Names