NATALIE MERCHANT Leave Your Sleep (2010 UK 'Selections of... Edition' 16-track CD album - For her Nonesuch debut, celebrated solo artist and the one-time voice of 10,000 Maniacs, Natalie Merchant took on what could have been a daunting task: she's adapted 19th and 20th century British and American poetry - well-known and obscure work, anonymous rhymes, children's lullabies, all of it timeless material full of direct emotion - and fashioned new songs from these words. Among the poets she chose were Robert Graves, Charles Manley Hopkins, Edward Lear, Ogden Nash, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The project, six years in the making, has clearly had a liberating effect on Merchant. Never has she sounded so free-spirited, so full of musical adventure, whether backed by small jazzy combos or elegant chamber ensembles. The tracks she's created range from exotic ['The King of China's Daughter'] to earthy ['The Peppery Man'], soothing ['I Saw A Ship A-Sailing'] to swinging ['The Janitor's Boy'] and moving ['Spring and Fall']. There's plenty of child-like wonder, counterbalanced with grown-up sophistication. Says Merchant, "'It was an exciting, new approach for me to work with rhythm and rhyme schemes created by other writers. The poems inspired vastly different musical settings with their themes that ranged from humorous and absurd to tragic, romantic, and deeply spiritual. Over the course of three years I wrote 40 of these poem-songs and 30 were eventually recorded'. Presented in a sealed tri-fold card digipak picture sleeve)