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.