Natalie Merchant’s ninth solo album, and first new material in almost ten years, is as mindful as you might expect from the former 10,000 Maniacs frontwoman and philanthropist. Keep Your Courage is dedicated to writer Joan Didion (‘and all her sisters’), and takes love and the heart as its holistic theme: the word ‘courage’ derives from the word for ‘heart’ in many languages (cœur, cuore, corazón).

Merchant produces 26 mentions of love across the album, as well as references to the self-love of ‘Narcissus’ and titular namechecks for Saint Valentine, and for the goddess of love on the album’s first single ‘Come On, Aphrodite’. If this mid-paced MOR invocation is any barometer, Merchant is trading in a mellow middle-aged kind of love, one dappled here with a lovely warm trumpet solo and a suggestion of comforting southern soul from her co-vocalist Abena Koomson-Davis.

Merchant has commissioned a variety of composers to produce the string arrangements throughout this album; in the case of ‘Guardian Angel’, the chamber orchestral arrangement outshines her song. But she also welcomes the gentle trill of flute and pipes from members of Lúnasa on ‘Eye Of The Storm’ and changes tone for a stately and strident cover of Lankum’s ‘Hunting The Wren’. 

Released on Nonesuch Records on Friday 14 April.