Eat Me

Natalie Merchant's Leave Your Sleep

by M.J. Fine

	print	email	reply	rss feed

Published: May 5, 2010

The transition from lead singer to solo artist was a smooth one for Natalie Merchant. When she left 10,000 Maniacs in 1993, the band was at its peak popularity, with steadily increasing sales and a well-received spot on MTV Unplugged. Since then, the group has limped along with one replacement vocalist or another, but it's never matched its earlier success. Meanwhile, Merchant went on to outperform her old crew with a pair of platinum discs. But what's she been up to lately?

After taking off to have a daughter six years ago, Merchant's back with Leave Your Sleep, a two-disc set of songs inspired by 18th- and 19th-century poems for children. It's stunning, both in its musical scope — more than 100 players help Merchant turn obscure old rhymes into lively jazz, folk and rock songs — and its depth of research, with the singer's notes filling a beautifully packaged book. Among the standouts are a bluegrass take on Ogden Nash's comic caper "Adventures of Isabel" and John Godfrey Saxe's political parable "The Blind Men and the Elephant," which brings together Hazmat Modine, the Fairfield Four and The Ditty Bops for an improbable mix of klezmer, gospel and swing.

But Merchant cribbed lyrics from Mother Goose long before she became a mom. "Eat for Two," from 1989's Blind Man's Zoo, draws on Humpty Dumpty to express regret and resentment over an unwanted pregnancy, and Merchant adds her own moral: "Pride is for men/ Young girls should run and hide instead." Factor in jangly and determined guitars, and you're left with the best thing she'll ever write.

Most of Zoo's other songs follow one of two bland formulas: Deceptively upbeat arrangements add little juice to Merchant's musings on imperialism ("Please Forgive Us") and environmental contamination ("Poison in the Well"), while meandering melodies suck all the air out of her big statements on war ("The Big Parade") and poverty ("Dust Bowl"). The exception is "Trouble Me," which coasts on Jevetta Steele's warm backing vocals. Which gets to the crux of the problem: Even with impeccable lyrics and a heart in the right place, Merchant's glassy timbre and garbled diction are grating as hell.

(m_fine@citypaper.net)

The Great Unsteady
Album Reviews
Phosphorescent
Caribou
Karl Berger
Shelby Lynne
It's A King Thing
Bobby Zankel/Rudresh Mahanthappa
Sub Swara
Hair Rocket