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Entertainment WeeklyThe result is scholary, sure, but surprisingly spirited, too. [16 Apr 2010, p.72]
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Leave Your Sleep is easily her most ambitious work, yet because of that welcoming voice, it provides familiarity enough to gather listeners inside this world of sound.
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Former 10,000 Maniacs frontwoman channels Alice In Wonderland with tingle-inducing results.
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Q MagazineA highly original two-disc set that as precious as it sounds, adpats poems from such diverse sources as ee cummings ans Gerald Manley Hopkins. [May 2010, p.124]
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It’s an effortlessly elegant and pleasant ride that even the obvious hip-yuppie trappings of it all can’t obscure.
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The broad spectrum of genres Merchant explores also prevents the set from feeling overlong. She has returned with a painstakingly constructed record that feels light and nimble, a credit to her still-impressive talent as a songwriter.
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Indeed, everything sounds so good from a purely musical perspective that the record perhaps doesn’t showcase its lyricists as well as it could.
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This labor of love (so exhaustively researched, so musically collaborative, so many years in the making) is not elitist or pedantic. It’s just beautiful and special.
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The music is beautiful and the vibe mellow, though Merchant gets Dixieland-brassy with Wynton Marsalis and tries some I-Threes-style reggae. But it’s like that My Morning Jacket song about the sexy librarian: You wish she’d let her hair down more.
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To be blunt though, for all the great literary and musical figures involved, the result of this creative vision sounds more or less the same as the music Natalie Merchant has been making for her whole solo career. Only more boring.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 18 out of 23
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Mixed: 0 out of 23
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Negative: 5 out of 23
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Oct 4, 2013