"Former 10,000 Maniacs singer Natalie Merchant hasn't released a proper solo album since Motherland in 2001. But the artist is planning an ambitious return in 2010. Her Nonesuch Records debut, Leave Your Sleep, is a two-disc album of original music with lyrics adapted from various poems, including works by Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Graves, Ogden Nash and Christina Rossetti.

"I've also been really intrigued about setting other people's words to music, rather than my own," says Merchant, who recruited 130 musicians to back her, ranging from the Wynton Marsalis Quintet to the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York. The 26-song Leave Your Sleep—co-produced with Merchant by Andres Levin—began as a "lullaby record" and slowly transitioned into a project about childhood in general. "At that point my kid was already 5 years old and was asking questions like, 'What happens when we die?' " she says. "I wanted to be able to answer those questions musically."

The artist originally planned to release the album in two volumes, but her label felt it would be strategically better to release it as one set. Nonesuch "said that you'd basically get one chance to talk about this project and have people listen, so you might as well put it all out at once," she says, adding that her second album for Nonesuch is already written, and she plans to record the songs with the backing of an orchestra." (Billboard.com)

Track listings

Disc 1
01. Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience
02. Equestreinne
03. Calico Pie
04. Bleezer's Ice-Cream
05. It Makes a Change
06. The King of China's Daughter
07. The Dancing Bear
08. The Man in the Wilderness
09. 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
01. Adventures of Isabel
02. The Walloping Window Blind
03. Topsyturvey-World
04. The Janitor's Boy
05. Griselda
06. The Land of Nod
07. Vain and Careless
08. Crying, My Little One
09. 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

Total time: 1 h 45 min


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