★★★★★
A first album of original material for 13 years from the former 10,000 Maniacs singer will be welcomed by many. The decade she's spent songwriting has included marriage, childbirth and divorce, so it's fair to expect a rollercoaster of emotions - yet we also get the kitchen sink in the shape of strings, brass and woodwinds. Add self-production and you have the recipe for overkill.
- recordcollectormag.com
2014-05-22
★★★★★
Natalie Merchant's new, self-titled album catches her in a dark and reflective mood, and if your response to that is "no duh", well, I don't blame you. But even for Natalie Merchant, this is weighty stuff. Gone are the days of blending heavy social issues with alternapop, and that's good news for this reviewer, who could never handle the privileged, holier-than-thou agitprop of 10,000 Maniacs, especially when the music was so self-consciously and ironically "happy"...
- www.popmatters.com
2014-05-08
★★★★★
Tweet Are You Buying What She's Selling? Yes, that Natalie Merchant. That's the message the raven-haired, lazy hummingbird-voiced darling of the late '80s/early '90s is delivering on her self-titled sixth solo album since leaving 10,000 Maniacs in 1993. Merchant released a collection of contemporary folk songs in 2003 with The House Carpenter's Daughter and set music to children's poems and lullabies in 2010 with Leave Your Sleep...
- www.mxdwn.com
2014-05-08
★★★★★
www.nonesuch.com
BY DAVID ISKRA
More of the same is usually a bad thing in the music world but sometimes it's perfectly all right. That's why some of our favorite musicians are like old friends, they're dependable. When you need advice you know who to call. When you have some gossip. Artists are like friends with different talents. If you need something upbeat, you know who to turn to. Having a Saturday night party? You've got the right band for the playlist. Need something for the gym...
- blurtonline.com
2014-05-08
★★★★★
Natalie Merchant Natalie MerchantBy Stuart HendersonIt's hard to point to the exact moment when Natalie Merchant, revered heroine of the college rock sound as lead singer for 10,000 Maniacs throughout the 1980s, became Natalie Merchant, your Mum's favourite background music. It must have been sometime around the release of her second solo record, the moody Ophelia (1998). Certainly, the shift took place while I was at university (1995-99), because I remember watching it happen...
- exclaim.ca
2014-05-06
★★★★★
Label:
Nonesuch
Release Date:
05/05/2014
FOLLOW ANDRZEJ LUKOWSKI
FOLLOW NATALIE MERCHANT
If you're yet to feel the tepid embrace of middle age - or, unlike me, you didn't decide aged 20 that it would be a marvellous idea to get really, really into Eighties college rock - there's a fair chance that you don't know who Natalie Merchant is, so long has she been AWOL...
- drownedinsound.com
2014-05-06
★★★★★
If you're yet to feel the tepid embrace of middle age - or, unlike me, you didn't decide aged 20 that it would be a marvellous idea to get really, really into Eighties college rock - there's a fair chance that you don't know who is, so long has she been AWOL. After blazing through Eighties and early Nineties with the earnest folk rock magnificence of 10,000 Maniacs, then following through with the glorious AOR monolith that was 1995's mega-selling solo debut and the strange, frozen , Merchant...
- www.drownedinsound.com
2014-04-29
★★★★★
On her first record for seven years Merchant has opted to leave the lyrics to others, fashioning fresh tunes around poems by writers both well-known and obscure. What started as a modest and personal "lullaby" project for her own child has blossomed into an album that intrigues and infuriates in equal measure...
- www.recordcollectormag.com
2010-12-21
★★★★★
Natalie Merchant is one of those spell weaving singer-songwriters in the same vein as Aimee Mann and Michael Penn. And, like Mann, Merchant left a successful career with a pop band to become a master of the adult alternative genre. Having seen chart success with 10,000 Maniacs - culminating in the smash hit cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Because the Night" in 1994 - Merchant went solo in 1995 and revisited the charts with her first album, Tigerlily...
- www.the-trades.com
2010-12-07
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