Keep Your Courage

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MERCHANT: ...And kept walking. I thought, this is going to get me in a room. And it didn't. I stayed in the hallway for another two hours.

Eye Of The Storm isn’t quite the song Guardian Angel is, but its beauty is complementary and it’s songs such as Eye Of The Storm that make Keep Your Courage one of the best albums released in 2023 and one that will remain a landmark recording for Merchant. Michael Stipe performs with Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs in 1993. Photograph: Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG/ Getty Images Keep Your Courage was recorded in Guilford Sound in Brattleboro, VT. It was produced by Natalie Merchant, recorded by Dave Snyder and mixed by Ryan Freeland. Motherhood had both expanded and shrunk that world but with her daughter having left for college in late 2021, Merchant is relishing being newly free again. “I’ve been able to rediscover myself as a creative person,” she says. “I feel like I can do anything I want.” You have more creative control if you're financing things, but it's a bigger burden for you. It's another thing on your list. And I really love doing my own production, but sometimes I just want to be the singer in the corner, working on "How am I going to phrase this perfectly? How am I going to emote this properly?" But when you're the producer, [you have to ask] "Was that the tempo that I want it to be? Is everything in time? Is everything in tune?"

Pedder, Alan (April 21, 2023). "Natalie Merchant: "When I say keep your courage, I'm talking to myself as much as anyone"". The Line of Best Fit . Retrieved April 22, 2023. I started writing songs, which I hadn't done in probably five years, and it seemed like the theme that just kept recurring was intimacy and risking intimacy. So that's what I started writing about. I think it was the isolation of the pandemic. [Laughs.] But even as there's a thematic throughline on the record, each song is different orchestrally and musically. "They're all little intrinsic worlds unto themselves," Merchant says.

After several years of focusing on being a single mother, Merchant returned to songwriting as an emotional outlet, composing songs for Keep Your Courage beginning in late 2020 or early 2021. [2] These represented the first songs that Merchant had written in six years. [3] The album is a song cycle built around the concept of having a courageous heart, [4] and is a concept album composed entirely of love songs, which Merchant was inspired to write after having surgery for ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament [5] as well as an anaplasmosis infection that led to sepsis [6] and experiencing healing from love and care by others. [7] [8] Lyrics discuss feelings of isolation that she had during the COVID-19 pandemic [9] and the album also explores political themes and feminism [10] and womanhood. [11] Many of the songs are written about or to fictional or mythological characters, which is a songwriting tool that Merchant uses to approach contemporary issues. [8] [12] She also read mythology during the pandemic, as it felt like a mythological event to her. [13] These songs are alchemy in the highest form possible.We all need to be reminded that such beauty exists.” – Valerie JuneThe album closes with the tender “The Feast of Saint Valentine,” a song that urges us to follow the courage in our hearts in the midst of the chaos and division around us because, Merchant sings, “Love will set you free and love will be your bonds/Love will win.” Brandle, Lars (April 18, 2023). "Metallica Heading to U.K. Chart Summit With '72 Seasons' ". Billboard . Retrieved April 18, 2023. MERCHANT: (Singing) Come on, Aphrodite, you goddess of love. Come on, Aphrodite, from that mountain above. Keep Your Courage debuted on the mid-week UK Albums Chart at 14, [35] but ended up placing 58 when the chart was published. MERCHANT: (Singing) Tinctures, teas and your secret remedies and your voice like Buffy Sainte-Marie...

So I really stepped away from that way of life. But I felt that if she'd be going off to college, that I would suddenly have this massive expanse of time and space that I would want to fill, and I wouldn't want to feel alone, because it's a big transition when your child goes away to college. So those were some of the motivations. Merchant left 10,000 Maniacs in 1993 having felt that she had outgrown the band and went on release a series of solo records starting with Tigerlily, which sold 5m copies in the US. She hasn’t matched that level of popularity since, but “there is a certain loyal base of people who will be open-minded about whatever it is I am doing,” she says. “Whether I am doing klezmer music or early jazz or so many different styles of music that I have explored since I went solo – people will go with me on the journey.”I loved working with Steve Davis. He's more of a jazz horn player. He's a trombone player. So he's really steeped in that jazz world. But I loved working with him because it wasn't all on paper. There was a lot of improvisation, and I could sing a line, and then it's so exciting when you sing a line and then the trumpet plays the line . . . [Laughs.] [sings trumpet line] That was a line that I kept singing to my guitar player. But when he played on the guitar with a slide or whatever, it didn't sound right, but when Steve took my guitar line and turned it into a horn section, that was what it was supposed to be. a b Kennedy, Mark (April 11, 2023). "Natalie Merchant emerges from darkness with nothing but love". Associated Press . Retrieved April 12, 2023. Facilities such as the Birthing Centre, says Merchant, are the outcome of years of women advocating for their rights, “to have the kind of medical care they deserve and want. It must be so horrible for them now to see that as of August of last year, half the women in my country have lost the ability to control their reproductive health. Men need to empathise because I feel we’re losing the fight. We need the advocacy and support of men, their allyship. Especially men who are in government.” And, yeah, on this album, every time I used love, I was describing love in a different form, whether it was platonic or romantic or this kind of expansive, inclusive love. And then the song "Come On, Aphrodite," it's an invocation to the goddess of love and passion saying, bring it on, right? And then the song "Big Girls," it said, ooh, it hurts.