Leave Your Sleep is the fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant. Produced by Merchant and Andres Levin, the double concept album is "a project about childhood" and is a collection of music adapted from 19th and 20th century British and American poetry about childhood.[10]BBC Music describes it as "200 years of lyrical and musical history, washing beautifully by."[3]
Tracks
Disc 1 — Leave Your Supper
No.
Title
Length
1.
"Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience"
5:10
2.
"Equestrienne"
4:38
3.
"Calico Pie"
2:41
4.
"Bleezer's Ice-Cream"
5:16
5.
"It Makes a Change"
3:30
6.
"The King of China's Daughter"
2:39
7.
"The Dancing Bear"
5:37
8.
"The Man in the Wilderness"
3:44
9.
"Maggie and Milly and Molly and May"
4:06
10.
"If No One Ever Marries Me"
2:21
11.
"The Sleepy Giant"
3:19
12.
"The Peppery Man"
5:05
13.
"The Blind Men and the Elephant"
5:32
Disc 2 — Leave Your Sleep
No.
Title
Length
1.
"Adventures of Isabel"
3:23
2.
"The Walloping Window Blind"
4:16
3.
"Topsyturvey-World"
5:08
4.
"The Janitor's Boy"
3:52
5.
"Griselda"
5:50
6.
"The Land of Nod"
4:04
7.
"Vain and Careless"
4:42
8.
"Crying, My Little One"
2:26
9.
"Sweet and a Lullaby"
3:04
10.
"I Saw a Ship A-Sailing"
2:12
11.
"Autumn Lullaby"
3:21
12.
"Spring and Fall: to a Young Child"
3:03
13.
"Indian Names"
5:52
Inspiration
The sleeve notes credit inspiration for the songs of this album as follows:
BBC Music gave a review following the album's release:
What’s astonishing is how cohesive it all is: from the fire-eyed, Celtic-tinged chamber music of Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience, through to the stark, troubled strings of the closing Indian Names, Leave Your Sleep never feels over-extended. The sheer ravishing beauty of the arrangements, combined with the tasteful, organic aesthetic (no synths here), prevents things ever jarring, and Merchant’s voice flows constant throughout, supple and hard as silken steel. Indeed, everything sounds so good from a purely musical perspective that the record perhaps doesn’t showcase its lyricists as well as it could. It’s hard to really see that it cumulatively says anything about childhood, except perhaps that it's the lurid bits that stick with you – Charles E. Carryl’s faintly traumatic The Sleepy Giant is a piece of grotesque that's hard to ignore. But most of these poems simply sink into the verdant whole – 200 years of lyrical and musical history, washing beautifully by.[3]
