Natalie Merchant has finally come out of a seven-year absence from the music world with a new album,
and a nationwide tour that hits Chicago on Thursday.
Merchant, a singer-songwriter who rose to fame as the lead singer of alternative rock band 10,000 Maniacs, spent the last five years working on this record, which is a collection of poems set to music envisioned and composed by Merchant herself. The idea for the record sprung from reading poems to her 7-year-old daughter, Lucia.
“The record is really the result of a change in lifestyle,” Merchant said. “There is a quietness that came into my life from having an infant. It slows you down and you crave quiet. I looked to these poets to describe what I was experiencing.”
The nightly event of reading poems to Lucia was Merchant’s way of teaching her how to speak, as well as fuel for Merchant’s musical creativity.
“I would mark the ones that she reacted to and the next day I would start working on how to set them to music,” Merchant said.
“Leave Your Sleep” is different from Merchant’s other albums because almost every song reflects a particular musical genre, including, but not limited to, Celtic folk, reggae, Cajun and bluegrass.
“I saw this as a chance to experiment with all the musical genres I love,” Merchant said. “It would be silly to make a whole CD of Celtic folk music, but using the poems as a base for the songs allowed me to experiment with using that sound.”
As far as how she decided which poem got which sound, Merchant said the poems spoke to her.
“Some poems had a certain rhythm that (lent) themselves to a type of music,” Merchant said, “But for others I would figure out what made them fascinating and unique and use that to experiment and figure out the type of song I wanted to create. Some poems I wrote in four or five different styles until I got the perfect sound.”
Merchant worked with a wide spectrum of musicians, but she orchestrated almost every part, including the music for some of the unique instruments used on the album. Additionally, the CD is almost all live ensemble recordings with very little overdubbing.
During her Thursday show at the Chicago Theatre, Merchant will play two sets; one of songs from “Leave Your Sleep” and the other a selection of songs from her
.
“For the full set of poetry music, I will talk about the lives of each poet and also have a slide presentation of images I collected during my research,” Merchant said. “Then, for the second set, I will do my catalog material, but I will use the same eight piece acoustic band that I used in the first set so the older songs will have an acoustic treatment. I have been doing the show acoustically in Europe and people have said it is a faithful interpretation of the songs.”
Merchant used three researchers to help her find information on the poetry and poets she features in “Leave Your Sleep.” Most of the research ended up in an 80-page book that includes photos and biographies of all the poets and accompanies the 26-song deluxe packaging version of the album.
In addition to being the impetus for “Leave Your Sleep,” Merchant said she made the CD in part to be an introduction to poetry and music for Lucia, who is not on tour with Merchant but is traveling Europe with her father, Daniel de la Calle.
“It makes me very sad (that she is not on tour),” Merchant said. “But she is 7 so she understands. We Skype a lot and stay in touch.”
As for her next album, Merchant isn’t ready to set a date, but she did say she has a lot of already-recorded poems from this project.
“In total, I adapted over 50 poems and only 26 have been released,” Merchant said. “Maybe someday I will release the other ones, but maybe not.”
Natalie Merchant
When:
8 p.m. Thursday
Where:
Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State Street
Price:
$38.50-$48; 800-745-3000,
thechicagotheatre.com
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