Hmmm?, this seems the first time that this disc appears in my Blog, strange, because it's such a fantastic disc, that resides in my top 50 discs of all time, this is Merchant's debut solo album, she formerly belonged to the 10,000 Maniacs, and as far as i'm concerned this is her best album, i saw it at my local Library, and those were the days i mined the Library for possible new musical ventures, i hired it out, and at first i found it fairly ordinary, the whole album sounded very much the same, but only on the last listening before i took it back, did the whole thing click into place and make sense, sadly her subsequent albums have been somewhat disappointing, and i find she's best served by getting a compilation album of her music [17th March 2011].
Natalie Merchant is American, she is now 49, she recorded this album in 1994-1995, the front cover is a fairly average portrait [photo by Dan Borris], a black and white shot, though good use of the hands, and a crazy green and orange colour scheme.
Wow!, nearly every single track was tremendous, if i had to pick 2 of the best, they would be tracks 5 & 8, and here's a synopsis of both,
5 Carnival - Natalie Merchant's Retrospective album that i linked above, has this track on that album, and that's the one i was most impressed with and talked about there, it's truly a fantastic piece of songwriting, a nice drumbeat at the start, using a plethora of different drums [0:00-0:53], a certain Reggae-ish and Jungle drumming track, and with the Bassist helping out, it sound like a Drum & Bass track at first, the intro lasts almost a minute, and Merchant's voice brings in the missing piece in the puzzle, but the Drummer [Peter Yanowitz] gets some very inventive hits in, the verses end after not much more than 3 minutes, then it's a fairly long guitar solo, and the very long vocal outro, the best lyrics, 'the scarlet welcome carpet, that they just rolled out for me', even after the track finishes [5:28], there's a recording of the street, and the very same song on the radio that just finished.
8 Cowboy Romance - For me the best song on this listen, yet not one of my favourites in general, there's of course a certain old style Country feel to the track, especially with an atmospheric use of the violin / fiddle [by Jay Unger], a nice yearning storyline, with the classic line 'you aint been born til you get out of town', an acoustic guitar and piano driven track, very sparse instrumentation, just the trio of guitar / piano / violin, which gives off a certain old worldness, i don't know if the lyrics are autobiographical, sounds like two drifters that can't be tamed, but can they reconcile their wilfulness / independence to team up?, the last words give a certain ambiguousness to the outcome, does he 'escape' at dawn as he sobers up?, a great track of love and loss.
5 Carnival - Natalie Merchant's Retrospective album that i linked above, has this track on that album, and that's the one i was most impressed with and talked about there, it's truly a fantastic piece of songwriting, a nice drumbeat at the start, using a plethora of different drums [0:00-0:53], a certain Reggae-ish and Jungle drumming track, and with the Bassist helping out, it sound like a Drum & Bass track at first, the intro lasts almost a minute, and Merchant's voice brings in the missing piece in the puzzle, but the Drummer [Peter Yanowitz] gets some very inventive hits in, the verses end after not much more than 3 minutes, then it's a fairly long guitar solo, and the very long vocal outro, the best lyrics, 'the scarlet welcome carpet, that they just rolled out for me', even after the track finishes [5:28], there's a recording of the street, and the very same song on the radio that just finished.
8 Cowboy Romance - For me the best song on this listen, yet not one of my favourites in general, there's of course a certain old style Country feel to the track, especially with an atmospheric use of the violin / fiddle [by Jay Unger], a nice yearning storyline, with the classic line 'you aint been born til you get out of town', an acoustic guitar and piano driven track, very sparse instrumentation, just the trio of guitar / piano / violin, which gives off a certain old worldness, i don't know if the lyrics are autobiographical, sounds like two drifters that can't be tamed, but can they reconcile their wilfulness / independence to team up?, the last words give a certain ambiguousness to the outcome, does he 'escape' at dawn as he sobers up?, a great track of love and loss.
