My hungry ghost of hopefulness

The journey continues...

Natalie Merchant (2014)

I remember listening to this one and quite liking it - but don't remember ever listening to it again, so it will be interesting to revisit it.

1. Ladybird
A song about a woman in a relationship that isn't working - it's decent enough and builds nicely throughout, but I really didn't need 6:39 of it.

2. Maggie Said
And here's a woman wondering what the point to her entire life was. I like this one - it harks back to the Ophelia era.

3. Texas
And this one has a similar sound to it, along with some lovely guitar.

4. Go Down Moses
She's getting a bit blues-y on this one - we've not heard too much of that over the years. It's OK, but maybe needs a bit more content in its 5:03.

5. Seven Deadly Sins
This is a nicely subtle song about the end of a relationship - an understated melody with barbed lyrics. Yeah, I like this.

6. Giving Up Everything
Some lovely strings on this - I had no idea what it was all about, but the internet informs me it's about giving up everything, so that clears that up. I quite like it though.

7. Black Sheep
We're a bit jazz-y here, with some nice oboe or clarinet (I can never tell them apart). I don't mind it, but there's not a lot to it. 

8. It's A-coming
Fine, but a bit too musical wallpaperish to hold my attention.

9. Lulu (introduction)
A silent movie style instrumental - a bit weird but makes some sense when you read that the following track is about Louise Brooks.

10. Lulu
Yeah, I like this one with it's piano-heavy backing along with some nice strings. 

11. The End
A decent enough ending, but there's maybe too many strings on it - it's just all a bit fiddly. It also outstays its welcome at 5:01.

Overall, I'd say this is a "nice" album but a bit lacking in obvious highlights, so I can quite understand how I quite liked it but never revisited it. Looking at what goes on the playlist, I'm going for "Seven Deadly Sins", "Giving Up Everything" and "Lulu" because I'd like them the best, but I'd struggle to say I loved them and I suspect I'll be scratching my head trying to remember them when they come up. I did feel that Natalie's vocals are often quite low in the mix and the lyrics aren't quite as intricate/clever as previous albums, so I think it suffers somewhat in comparison with some other more sing-along-able of her albums. It's fine, I guess.

Wikipedia tells it's her first album of original material since Motherland and was generally viewed positively by the critics - and that's about it. Interestingly, this is the solo album that has achieved the highest chart position (#34) in the UK, beaten only by Blind Man's Zoo (#18) out of all her albums - and I'm completely at a loss to explain why that might be the case. Looking elsewhere on the internet, it tells me that around this time Natalie had her daughter, lost her mother and got divorced so I guess I can understand some of the subject matter.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent CD version for £4 but if you want to splash out then you're out of luck because the most you can spend is £7.50 on a very similar CD version - a load of her albums feel like people would snap up vinyl versions but they just don't exist. There's nothing wrong with this album but that doesn't mean that everything's right with it - it's interesting from a completist point of view, but not really from any other so I feel I'd be more likely to revisit the quirk of Leave Your Sleep.

Leave Your Sleep - a visit to the library