Leave Your Sleep is the fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant. Produced by Merchant and Andres Levin, the double concept album is "a project about childhood" and is a collection of music adapted from 19th and 20th century British and American poetry about childhood. BBC Music describes it as "200 years of lyrical and musical history, washing beautifully by."
Tracks
Inspiration The sleeve notes credit inspiration for the songs of this album as follows: Adventures of Isabel – Ogden Nash Autumn Lullaby – Anonymous Bleezer's Ice-Cream – Jack Prelutsky Calico Pie – Edward Lear Crying, My Little One – Christina Rossetti If No One Ever Marries Me – Laurence Alma-TademaIf No One Ever Marries Me poem by Laurence Alma-Tadema, ArtMagick Illustrated Poetry Collection Indian Names – Lydia Huntley Sigourney I Saw a Ship A-Sailing – Anonymous It Makes a Change – Mervyn Peake Equestrienne – Rachel Field Griselda – Eleanor Farjeon Maggie and Milly and Molly and May – E. E. Cummings Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience – Charles Causley Spring and Fall – Gerard Manley Hopkins Sweet and a Lullaby – Anonymous The Blindmen and the Elephant – John Godfrey Saxe The Dancing Bear – Albert Paine The Janitor's Boy – Nathalia Crane The King of China's Daughter – Anonymous The Land of Nod – Robert Louis Stevenson The Man in the Wilderness – Anonymous The Peppery Man – Arthur Macy The Sleepy Giant – Charles E. Carryl The Walloping Window Blind – Charles E. Carryl Topsyturvey-World – William Brighty Rands Vain and Careless – Robert Graves
Charts Weekly charts Chart (2010)PeakPositionAustralian Albums (ARIA) N.B. The High Point number in the NAT column represents the release's peak on the national chart.168Austrian Album Charts46
Reception BBC Music gave a review following the album's release:What’s astonishing is how cohesive it all is: from the fire-eyed, Celtic-tinged chamber music of Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience, through to the stark, troubled strings of the closing Indian Names, Leave Your Sleep never feels over-extended. The sheer ravishing beauty of the arrangements, combined with the tasteful, organic aesthetic (no synths here), prevents things ever jarring, and Merchant’s voice flows constant throughout, supple and hard as silken steel. Indeed, everything sounds so good from a purely musical perspective that the record perhaps doesn’t showcase its lyricists as well as it could. It’s hard to really see that it cumulatively says anything about childhood, except perhaps that it's the lurid bits that stick with you – Charles E. Carryl’s faintly traumatic The Sleepy Giant is a piece of grotesque that's hard to ignore. But most of these poems simply sink into the verdant whole – 200 years of lyrical and musical history, washing beautifully by.
References
External links Natalie Merchant, "Leave Your Sleep" by Billboard