| Natalie Merchant News: |
| Natalie Merchant Concert Tickets to see Natalie Merchant in Concert. Natalie Merchant's third studio solo album, MOTHERLAND, is in stores now. Co-produced with T Bone Burnett (Elvis Costello, Wallflowers, Sam Philips, Oh Brother Where Art Thou?) MOTHERLAND is a collection of twelve new and original songs. Renowned for her stylistically eclectic albums, Merchant forges ahead with MOTHERLAND, moving in exciting new directions both musically and thematically. This latest offering covers more diverse emotional and intellectual territory than any release in Merchant's career, now two decades in progress.
"Creating a sequence for the songs on this album was a big challenge and I hope that I performed a successful balancing act. I've never written songs more overtly political or so intimately personal before." |
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| Natalie Merchant Concert Tickets to see Natalie Merchant in Concert. In painterly texture and cinematic scope, MOTHERLAND opens with a haunting arrangement of Arabic-influenced strings and flutes in parallel intervals, underscored by distorted electric guitars and a reggae rhythm. When Merchant sings, "I don't have the gift of the prophesy for telling everybody how it's gonna be," she describes a people on the verge of rebellion. The chilling fact that this album was completed two days before the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon amplifies the disturbing edge of these lyrics.
"I actually wrote THIS HOUSE IS ON FIRE during the WTO protests in Seattle and the presidential ballot dispute in Florida. I saw people taking to the streets to find their collective voice and to be heard. I decided to ask Stephen Barber to write the string arrangement in that particular mode because I am a fan of North African pop music, especially Om Kalsoum, the famous Egyptian chanteuse. It is very strange how events are conspiring to give this song possible new meaning I could never have imagined." |