Excellent Artist - First let me say this..you be the judge. I love Natalie Merchant and this retrspective is a great collective presentation of songs from very notable albums.I recommend this if you are a concientious listener.She is poetic and bring awareness to child sex enslavement (Sally Anne), Culture that has gone crazy (Carnival), and of course humane conflict (Jealousy). So if you are into an array of versatility this will suit you well.
Eat Some Brunch! - Thanks to Amazon.com, or else I may have never discovered the music of Natalie Merchants. I m always perusin this site in search of my favorite genre of music -- sea shanties. I figured with a last name of Merchants, why not Paypal the 10.97 and take this one for a whirl. First of all, the bad news.. there are only 2 songs that approach being sea shanties, and in all truth, they re not even that close. Now the good news, this is record unexpectedly achieves a very high level of compliance in a different musical genre altogether: Brunch-Rock. I should ve knowed from the cover where she looks like someone desperately waiting for their eggs Benedict to be delivered to the table on a brisk Sunday morning. Have you ever wanted the perfect CD to put on while you have some French Toast? This is it. Wash it down with a bloody Mary or three? Certainly. Maybe eggs aren t good for me and I m going to go ahead and order the Club Sandwich and I ll substitute the Tater Tots with the Organic Arugula Salad Greens? Yes, yes, and yes sir. Please Come Again!
Best Selection - Natalie s finest, only for those who can appreciate her voice and this selection brings us the best of her latest work.
Meet Natalie Merchant - After leaving 10,000 Maniacs at the peak of their career (MTV Unplugged), Natalie Merchant struck artistic and commercial paydirt with Tigerlily. It was the closest thing to a Maniacs sound out of the four studio albums she has recorded in the years leading up to this retrospective. Each of the albums after found Merchant, never a wallflower when it came to activism, making her albums more socially adept and - once Motherland hit - edgier.Natalie is at her best when she explores the middle ground between her folk music and singer/songwriter tendencies. Both Wonder and Kind and Generous could have been from the Joni Mitchell songbook. Motherland (love the accordion) picks at urban sprawl and blind consumerism. T-Bone Burnett drew out a deeper voice from Natalie, and it rates as one of her finest songs. (Joan Baez has since covered it on Dark Chords on a Big Guitar.) The journey that Motherland started went further on The House Carpenter s Daughter, where she and alt-folk The Horseflies tackled old school folk songs with a great deal of verve. Of course, it was so left-field that it became her first album to not hit the top 100. This is a great casual introduction to one of the 80 s and 90 s finest vocalists. She kept her integrity as she grew into new forms of singing. Even if the hits stopped coming, there is still plenty of memorable music here, and it trims off the occasional mawkish poetry (think River from Tigerlily). It also would have been nice to include either of the covers from the live album, Neil Young s After The Gold Rush in particular. But if all you want is some of Natalie at her best (and the hits), the will do fine.
Natalie Merchant - I gave this cd to my husband, he was very pleased with it. As for me theprice was a good buy. Will purchase from you again.