Natalie Merchant - Leave Your Sleep

I'm a big Natalie Merchant fan. I've seen her live a few times and it's always different. I have all her solo albums, and the ones with 10,000 Maniacs. As the first responder above said, she is an acquired taste. Many of her albums are a little dark (Motherland) but worth buying. Once you listen, you will likely fall under her spell. She had a big gap between albums, but I have never been disappointed by any of her material and look forward to the next one.

I remember when she came on Saturday Night Live right after leaving 10KM. Huge reception and celebration. Then she sort of disappeared from the mainstream.

For a long time she was an artist in Residence at the New York City Head Start program and she was kind of out of active music production for that time. You know I've been listening to 10,000 Maniacs since probably 1990 or 91 and I really don't see Natalie merchandise and acquired taste. I mean she's not like a Bjork or a Lori Anderson or something similar. She's pretty mainstream when it comes to composition and delivery. Yes her voice is non-traditional but it's definitely not niche

Although I have not heard Leave Your Sleep, I’ve always liked the sound of her voice going back to The 10,000 Maniacs days.  I enjoyed her solos and harmonizing on the Cowboy Junkies Trinity Revisited CD, and her cover of Because The Night on the Cover Me CD was extremely good.

She'll never equal or surpass Tiger Lilly, which brought massive attention from the Ultra Woke Crowd which dragged her down back to obscurity.

The Tiger Lilly DVD-A is superb both in content and production.

Apparently she now lives in upstate NY with no electricity and washing her clothes in the river. She doesn't like guns and Republicans.