I’m sitting through my first listening of ‘Leave Your Sleep‘, a 2010 CD by Natalie Merchant.  It was an impulse choice at the library today.  I say first listening because I’m confident there will be other listening sessions.  I happily discovered that she took all the lyric material from poetry.

Now that I’m attempting to improve my own writing AND taking an interest in setting poems to music- this fell right into my lap.

  I read some of the reviews of this collection online and I must say some folks just didn’t give it a fair shake (IMHO).  It is the arrangements and production that give this collection it’s juice.  I’m not a fan of EVERY tune, but wow, what a solid collection.  It’s obvious to me that this suite took a lot of time to codify.  As a songwriter, and a writer in general I’m finding serious inspiration here for my own work. Well done NM.