Keep Your Courage is the eighth studio album by American singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant, released on April 14, 2023, by Nonesuch Records. It is her first full-length studio album since 2014's Natalie Merchant and Merchant also promoted the release with a tour, accompanied on some dates by a symphony orchestra. The album has received positive reviews, but faced criticism for its tone and length.
Composition and recording
After several years of focusing on being a single mother, Merchant returned to songwriting as an emotional outlet, composing songs for Keep Your Courage beginning in late 2020 or early 2021.[2] These represented the first songs that Merchant had written in six years.[3] The album is a song cycle built around the concept of having a courageous heart,[4] and is a concept album composed entirely of love songs, which Merchant was inspired to write after having surgery for ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament[5] as well as an anaplasmosis infection that led to sepsis[6] and experiencing healing from love and care by others.[7][8] Lyrics discuss feelings of isolation that she had during the COVID-19 pandemic[9] and the album also explores political themes and feminism[10] and womanhood.[11] Many of the songs are written about or to fictional or mythological characters, which is a songwriting tool that Merchant uses to approach contemporary issues.[8][12] She also read mythology during the pandemic, as it felt like a mythological event to her.[13]
In-studio recordings only featured up to five persons at a time due to COVID restrictions, so the resulting music was made with layering recordings.[2] The cover is a photograph of a statue of Joan of Arc that Merchant found many years prior and kept.[14]
Release and promotion
"I was raising my daughter, and I'm a single mom... My days are so full that it never occurred to me that I should sit down and write a song. I was just focused on so many other things. It's an indulgence to sit down with the piano and sing. It got to the point where I forgot that I was a songwriter, or that I could write songs."
—Merchant on her extended absence from performing, recording, and songwriting, leading up to Keep Your Courage and its subsequent tour[15]
Two singles preceded the album's release: "Come On, Aphrodite" on February 15, 2023, and "Tower of Babel" on March 30, 2023.[16][17] Merchant participated in a promotion with Uncut to answer fans' questions[18] that ran in the June 2023 issue.[13] She also hosted a set on WDST, Radio Woodstock on April 15.[19] On April 18, 2023, Merchant released a third single off of the album, "Big Girls".[20]
Merchant withheld the release for almost a year in order to safely tour around the COVID-19 pandemic.[21] Beginning in May 2022, Merchant took the music from this album and prepared it for an orchestral arrangement.[22] The promotional tour was her first long-term tour in almost a decade[23] and found Merchant accompanied by a string quartet on all dates.[22] Merchant also performed on Good Morning America on June 20.[24]
In the table below, entries with an asterism (⁂) feature an orchestra.
Keep Your Courage received positive reviews from critics noted at review aggregator Metacritic. It has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, based on seven reviews.[30] In No Depression, Jim Shahen characterizes this release as "full of ambitious musical passages, thoughtful lyrics, and fantastic vocal performances centered on the need for love and meaningful human connection".[1]PopMatters' Steve Horowitz rated Keep Your Courage a seven out of 10, noting an "alchemy" between the musicians and styles, but critiquing that Merchant "would be better if Merchant lightened up a bit... She would be more honest if she were funnier, and this would make her morals easier to digest."[7] Tom Dunne of The Irish Examiner listed this as one of his six favorite albums of the year so far in mid-April 2023.[31] John Murphy of musicOMH gave the album three out of five stars, praising individual tracks, but noting that "there are a couple of tracks that veer towards the forgettable, and the overall downbeat tempo of the album as a whole may test the patience of some listeners".[32] In The Daily Telegraph, Neil McCormick rated this album four out of five stars, praising "the cohesive, eternal quality of Merchant's ability to weave romantic, folk-rock ballads rich with organ, brass, and tidal waves of strings all anchored to simple piano melodies".[33] Editors at AllMusic Guide scored this release four out of five stars, with critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine praising the music for "celebrat[ing] compassion, empathy, and inspiration" while being "stately and sober", with "Merchant's inherently warm, empathetic voice keep[ing] the album from seeming still in its quiet moments".[34] Graham Reid of The New Zealand Herald included this in his favorite albums of 2023.[35] Editors at AllMusic included this among their favorite singer-songwriter music albums of 2023.[36]
