My favorite CD Natalie put out... - I didn t care much for Tigerlily (except Carnival and to a lesser extent, Wonder), but I listened to Ophelia on repeat for the better half of a year! This is a mature and thoughtful album. The song type isn t incredibly varied (they are all rather serious and slow), but if you like lyrics to carry a song, this is your kind of album.
the best Natalie album - I think Ophelia is the best Natalie Merchant album, I love every song on it, in particular Ophelia, Life is sweet, Kind & generous, Break your heart, King of may, Thick as thieves, and every song is a jewel by itself, I strongly love this album, I think Natalie never surpassed it with her other albums, I saw her in concert in Milan, years ago, and she is an excellent performer.
Ophelia CD - The product came really fast but the first two songs on the CD skid really bad.
4.5 Stars... On the 10th anniversary of Natalie s masterpiece - Let me state upfront that I am a big Natalie Merchant fan. I have all the albums, of course. That said, it was quite a surprise to me when I was at a dinner party recently and in the background Ophelia was playing. Natalie has been out of the limelight quite a while now (the last studio album, the vastly underappreciated The House Carpenter s Daughter was issued in 2003), and I will admit I hadn t put Natalie in my CD changer since forever. I relistened to all of her albums, but Ophelia sticks out, and now that we are approaching the 10th anniversary of its release (originally released in May, 1998), it s worth revisiting it.On Ophelia (11 tracks, 57 min.) it is immediately clear that this will not be Tigerlily 2. Indeed the somber title track kicks things off, and sets the mood for the entire album: pensive, introspective, and slower. Kind & Generous, the sole radio hit on here, in fact sounds a bit out of place and I can imagine that anyone hearing this song and buying this album, expecting something along the lines of the easily accessible Tigelily, would have been mightily disappointed (and perhaps even felt mislead). The heart of the album are tracks 5 and 6: My Skin is as haunting and vulnerable as Natalie has ever sounded, to this day still, with lines like Do you remember the way that you touched me before/all the trembling sweetness/I loved and adored.../Your face saving promises/whispered like prayers/I don t need them, wow. Break Your Heart is a slightly faster song in which Natalie reflects on the emotional hurt that people suffer. Other highlights include Thick as Thieves which includes a subdued but chilling electric guitar solo, and the short pensive Effigy. What keeps me from giving this 5 stars is the very last track When They Ring the Golden Bells, which belongs on the Carpenter s Daughter album, not here, but it s a slight complaint, to be sure.In all, to rediscover Ophelia is like running into an old friend you haven t seen in a long time and immediately reconnect with. Frankly, I m surprised how well this album has aged, hard to believe that this came out 10 years ago! Rumor has it that Natalie finally will issue a new album sometime later in 2008. Come back already Natalie, we miss you!
The best Natalie CD? - I have been a Natalie fan since the 10,000 Maniacs first self-produced releases. I talked to her early on at local shows and continued to follow her progress, the band s, and guitarist John Lombardo s. Having heard everything by the Maniacs, and Miss Merchant, it s my opinion that her solo masterpiece is Ophelia. If you re new to Natalie Merchant, her first solo CD, Tigerlily, is wonderful. I m sure she felt she had something to prove after leaving the Maniacs and she makes a very strong case that she was meant to go solo. The album is strong, catchy, and upbeat. Ophelia was her second solo CD and it is, by contrast, much more somber than Tigerlily. I d think the dark sound of the CD probably made it less enjoyable than Tigerlily to those people who view her as a light pop artist. I, however, find the CD much more rewarding to return to than Tigerlily. Her third solo CD was Motherland. That s a CD that even I, unfortunately, view as too downbeat and without enough catchy melodies.Ophelia is probably her richest sounding solo CD. Where Tigerlily was poppy, and Motherland was willfully folky, Ophelia uses classical instruments to expand the sound. The CD contains three songs that were singles: Life is Sweet, Kind and Generous, and Break Your Heart, so it has more than its share of good hummable singles. What helps makes this CD better than the others though is that it feels as if all the songs are part of a greater whole. Another positive attribute is that the lead singer from the band The Innocence Mission sings harmony on two of these tracks, and she has a haunting voice. If you want to check out Miss Merchant at her heaviest most successful solo moment, this CD is the one.