Folk-influenced American Rock: Natalie Merchant's Retrospective - 1995-2005

In retrospective, I remember Natalie Merchant’s voice giving sweet comfort, wrapping 10,000 Maniacs melodies around my melancholy while riding in a car in a cold rain. Natalie Merchant’s Retrospective 1995-2005, highlighting her solo career, doesn’t go back as far as those days, but it’s still Merchant’s voice. Sometimes her songwriting has sounded like she’s recycling her own material (hints of “Jealousy” are in “Wonder”). However, her lyricism has always opened worlds, tunneling right through the heart. Her voice carries those lyrics like a toy train that a child shoves across the living room floor.

This collection includes liner notes written by Merchant, propelling the train further into the heart’s crossroads. With “Carnival,” Merchant explains the fears of working alone without her band for the first time, while also telling the story of the incredible guitarist Jennifer Turner who joined her. On “Kind & Generous,” you get the story of what’s it like for this singer/songwriter to be a pop artists who gets license requests to use the song in ways she’d never even dreamed.

On the liner photos shows Merchant laying on her stomach on a picnic table, feet in the air like a small child but with a storyteller’s knowing face and an arm outstretched in a bit of a resignation to the world. It’s a picture that captures visually that sweet comfort, warm arms of Merchant’s voice.

Thanks to Natalie Merchant and Rhino for the review copy.