Keep Your Courage

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Merchant is now fully recovered from her health crisis. It’s nine years since she did a tour that lasted longer than three weeks: her world tour begins this month and will come to the UK in November. “Writing is a solitary time of tinkering and pondering,” she says. “Studio work is communal but it’s more like a massive building project that requires engineering and so much diplomacy. Live performance is when I get a chance to roam around inside the structure I built and discover unexpected things, marvel at the acoustics or linger in my favourite room to notice the way the light pours in a window.” Brandle, Lars (April 18, 2023). "Metallica Heading to U.K. Chart Summit With '72 Seasons' ". Billboard . Retrieved April 18, 2023.

MERCHANT: But my mother was a massive fan of classical music, and she was a single mom with four kids, so no money. And we lived near Chautauqua Institution, which had orchestra concerts in the summer every Tuesday and Saturday night. And we would sneak in a hole in the fence and go to the symphony. So from the time I was really young, I really have a great appreciation for symphonic music. And to be standing in front of an orchestra, it's such a privilege. Over her forty-year career Natalie Merchant has attained a place among America’s most respected recording artists. She has earned a reputation for being a songwriter of quality and a captivating stage performer and has distinguished herself as a social justice and environmental activist. Merchant began her musical career as the lead vocalist and lyricist of the pop music band 10,000 Maniacs and released one platinum, two double-platinum, and one triple-platinum records with the group: The Wishing Chair (1985), In My Tribe (1987), Blind Man's Zoo (1989), Hope Chest (1990), Our Time in Eden (1992), and 10,000 Maniacs MTV Unplugged (1993). Merchant left the group in 1994 and has subsequently released nine albums as a solo artist with combined sales of seven million copies: Tigerlily (1995), Ophelia (1998), Natalie Merchant Live (1999), Motherland (2001), The House Carpenter’s Daughter (2003), Leave Your Sleep (2010), Natalie Merchant (2014), Paradise Is There (2015), and Butterfly (2017). When it was recorded, I sent the song to Ian and he was very kind and complimentary. I remember how I felt when Christy Moore covered my song, Motherland, and how when I played Irish shows people would say to me afterwards that it was great to hear a Christy Moore song being covered by me!”As regular readers of Subjective Sounds would note, I appreciate the human voice as an instrument in the mix rather than as a storytelling device and while the songs included on Keep Your Courage explore isolation, love, politics, and feminism, which will appeal to those who appreciate dissecting songs for their literal meanings, I remain in awe of Merchant’s vocal reach throughout as they are thoroughly pleasing to the senses. Just the fact that I was doing it, that was what was different. [Laughs.] I redirected my creative energies for years into other areas, in other directions. I couldn't commit to that cycle of writing, recording, touring that I'd lived for 20 years before I had my daughter. It consumes so much energy and time. I wanted to be a good parent. And I'm a single mother, so I'm it. The album closes with the tender “The Feast of Saint Valentine,” a song that urges us to follow the courage in our hearts in the midst of the chaos and division around us because, Merchant sings, “Love will set you free and love will be your bonds/Love will win.”

Big Girls (feat. Abena Koomson-Davis) is a beautiful song to open the album on. From the first piano notes, to Merchant’s glorious vocal, the sonic sparseness is the highlight here as it allows the mind to relax and reflect before the other musical elements come into the mix. Big Girls has a little bit of everything. There are the singer/songwriter elements, a jazz influence, as well as a tad of pop to be heard. Stunning describes it, but it’s also an understatement. The album is dedicated to the American writer Joan Didion, who in December 2021 died in the same week that Merchant recorded the vocals for Sister Tilly. The album’s most charming, least adorned song, it is a gorgeous rumination on the older women in Merchant’s life who influenced, inspired and politicised her, and who are now steadily dying. “Your feminist raves in your Didion shades, and your Zeppelin so loud and so proud,” sings Merchant. “Here’s to your days at the barricades, here’s to the girls in the fray, oh, how I wish you could stay.” The dedication is also, she says, “to all of Didion’s sisters”, the older women who “tend to be shoved aside. I don’t know how it is in Ireland, but in the US the feeling is along the lines of ‘Do us a favour and become invisible once you reach a certain age’. But these women I write about are vivid characters; they’re wise, intelligent, have an incredible amount of experience, and I turn to them for advice. It’s really heartbreaking they’re leaving us.” I’m all about the happy/sad music,” says Natalie Merchant towards the end of our chat. She has good cause to say this – her solo career is strewn with love’s complementary phases, and none more so than on her ninth album, Keep Your Courage, which charts the route of a fearless heart. How does anyone navigate, successfully or otherwise, that kind of journey? Merchant advises to be resilient, patient, resourceful, and pragmatic – each is an important part of the excursion.Pushed on the point, Merchant clarifies that she’d never really fallen out of love with language, she just “didn’t act on it as a writer.” “I don't know how it is for you, but sometimes you're so impressed by other people's writing that you almost don't want to bother yourself. Some songwriters are so good that they just make me feel diminished,” she says, pausing. “Or I allow myself to feel diminished.” And there were a couple songs I wrote for the record that we tried and I realized they didn't fit in with the others. It's just smarter to make that decision earlier than later. Merchant didn’t write and record any new material thanks to the demands of motherhood. “Lyric writing demands solitude and when I am in that state there is no eating, no stopping. I won’t leave the house for days until it’s done,” she says. “I did not want to do that to my daughter. I did not want to be one of those artists that valued my work more than my child. I thought if I never make another record, she is the accomplishment on my deathbed.” Her spinal condition seemed to make the decision final. It's always been admirable that Merchant only released solo albums when she felt like she had something to say. Keep Your Courage certainly fits that bill, while being a welcome return to form to boot.’