Keep Your Courage

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]

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 is her first long-term tour in almost a decade[23] and it finds 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]

All songs written by Natalie Merchant, except where noted

1. "Big Girls" – 4:56
2. "Come On, Aphrodite" – 5:21
3. "Sister Tilly" – 7:42
4. "Narcissus" – 6:02
5. "Hunting the Wren" (Ian Lynch) – 5:47
6. "Guardian Angel" – 5:56
7. "Eye of the Storm" – 5:30
8. "Tower of Babel" – 2:28
9. "Song of Himself" – 4:51
10. "The Feast of Saint Valentine" – 6:06

Vinyl edition bonus tracks

11. "Spring & Fall: To a Young Child" – 3:03 (from Leave Your Sleep, 2010)
12. "Butterfly" – 5:39 (from Butterfly, 2017)
13. "Giving Up Everything" – 4:20 (from Natalie Merchant, 2014)
14. "Frozen Charlotte" – 5:58 (from Butterfly, 2017)

• Natalie Merchant – vocals, production, liner notes, design
• Kinan Azmeh – clarinet
• Stephen Barber – conducting
• Andrea Camuto – portrait photography
• Steve Davis – trombone
• Ryan Freeland – mixing at Stampede Origin, Culver City, California, United States
• Megan Gould – conducting
• Matt Hall – assistant engineering
• Colin Jacobsen – conducting
• Gabriel Kahane – conducting
• Abena Koomson-Davis – vocals on "Big Girls" and "Come On, Aphrodite"
• Lúnasa
  • Ed Boyd – guitar
  • Kevin Crawford – flutes, whistles
  • Patrick Doocey – guitar
  • Colin Farrell – fiddle, whistles
  • Trevor Hutchinson – double bass
  • Seán Smyth – fiddle, whistles
  • Cillian Vallely – Uilleann pipes, whistles
• Allison Miller – drums and percussion
• Kim Rosen – mastering at Knack Mastering, Ringwood, New Jersey, United States
• Anabel Sinn – design
• Dave Snyder – engineering

Keep Your Courage debuted on the mid-week UK Albums Chart at 14,[35] but ended up placing 58 when the chart was published.

• List of 2023 albums

• Official website
• Press release from Nonesuch
• Keep Your Courage at Discogs (list of releases)
• Keep Your Courage at MusicBrainz (list of releases)
• Photo gallery of the Clearwater performance from Creative Loafing
• A set by Merchant for World Cafe
• A promotional set for WTTS-FM
• Merchant on Songcraft