Keep Your Courage

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. These represented the first songs that Merchant had written in six years. The album is a song cycle built around the concept of having a courageous heart, 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 as well as an anaplasmosis infection that led to sepsis and experiencing healing from love and care by others. Lyrics discuss feelings of isolation that she had during the COVID-19 pandemic and the album also explores political themes and feminism and womanhood. 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. She also read mythology during the pandemic, as it felt like a mythological event to her.

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. The cover is a photograph of a statue of Joan of Arc that Merchant found many years prior and kept.

Release and promotion
Two singles preceded the album's release: "Come On, Aphrodite" on February 15, 2023, and "Tower of Babel" on March 30, 2023. Merchant participated in a promotion with Uncut to answer fans' questions that ran in the June 2023 issue. She also hosted a set on WDST, Radio Woodstock on April 15. On April 18, 2023, Merchant released a third single off of the album, "Big Girls".

Merchant withheld the release for almost a year in order to safely tour around the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning in May 2022, Merchant took the music from this album and prepared it for an orchestral arrangement. The promotional tour is her first long-term tour in almost a decade and it finds Merchant accompanied by a string quartet on all dates. Merchant also performed on Good Morning America on June 20.

In the table below, entries with an asterism (⁂) feature an orchestra.

Reception
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. 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". 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." Tom Dunne of The Irish Examiner listed this as one of his six favorite albums of the year so far in mid-April 2023. 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". 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". 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". Graham Reid of The New Zealand Herald included this in his favorite albums of 2023. Editors at AllMusic included this among their favorite singer-songwriter music albums of 2023.

Track listing
All songs written by Natalie Merchant, except where noted Vinyl edition bonus tracks
 * 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
 * 1) "Spring & Fall: To a Young Child" – 3:03 (from Leave Your Sleep, 2010)
 * 2) "Butterfly" – 5:39 (from Butterfly, 2017)
 * 3) "Giving Up Everything" – 4:20 (from Natalie Merchant, 2014)
 * 4) "Frozen Charlotte" – 5:58 (from Butterfly, 2017)

Personnel

 * 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

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