Description
There’s a compelling earnestness to Natalie Merchant‘s voice. With her low baritone and careful annunciation, she always sounds knowledgeable and understanding. The former frontwoman of 10,000 Maniacs comes off as sincere and serious even when crooning about love in a lighthearted vein. The protagonists and narrators of her songs are aware that everything can come crashing down. Deception can come from oneself as well as the others in one’s life. La di da.
All ten songs on Merchant’s ninth solo studio album, Keep Your Courage, concern love of some kind or other. She wrote all but one song, and it’s her first record of all-new material in almost ten years. The songs are not topical in the traditional sense, with no explicit references to COVID, climate change, and political turmoil. Instead, Merchant addresses Aphrodite, Narcissus, St. Valentine, her guardian angel, and other mythic figures.
Merchant’s album title says it all, Keep Your Courage. The beauty of the songs here offers solace more than anguish. The fact that everything changes can be hopeful.
