Natalie Merchant, “Keep Your Courage.”

It’s hard to believe that the career of Natalie Merchant has now spanned decades. She started out at 17 as the lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs, the radio-friendly alt-rock band of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Such deep, smoky vocals came out of such a wisp of an ingénue, her bob of dark curls physically framing the gravitas and clarity that her voice brought to the band’s benign hits like “These Are the Days” and “Like the Weather.” They were pop songs that packed a wallop, thanks to her throaty voice.

The weight of time hasn’t dampened Merchant’s deep timbre, though her hair is now a crown of silver tresses falling well past her shoulders. On Keep Your Courage, Merchant’s ninth solo album and her first new material in almost 10 years, her smoky voice sounds the same, but the music feels like it’s dipped in wine rather than steeped in bourbon. Yes, this is the same singer who once covered Morrissey’s “Every Day Is Like Sunday,” but that was then.

Now, though her voice is just as deep and euphonic, and her lyrics speak of being weathered and resilient, the music feels superficially so. Merchant’s voice is capable of carrying weightier, more resonant songs than what she offers on this album. Just listen to songs like “Carnival” and “River” from her first solo album, 1995’s Tigerlily, to hear the richness of emotion and depth of feeling that her songwriting could plumb. Yet, the songs on Keep Your Courage sound like faded copies of those songs and that person, a mishmash of snatches of songs cribbed from musical forebears like Carole King or Joni Mitchell or Aretha Franklin.

Keep Your Courage leaves nothing to chance, grabbing at folk here, gentle soul flourishes there, Celtic folk strings, light jazz, anything mellifluous and agreeable, then diluted. It strains to be truly resonant, even though Merchant’s voice is more than able to reach that fierceness of conviction. In her career, she’s worked with R.E.M., David Byrne, Cowboy Junkies, Billy Bragg and Wilco—artists who could at times be provocative and experimental. But the songs here are timid, sweet and somnambulant. Merchant says she wrote this album in the middle of the pandemic, and that the songs are “about the human heart.” They feel strangely sallow.

“Big Girls” is the first track, and has an Aretha, “Natural Woman” vibe throughout, calling out those weathered women who “Don’t cry/ Hard as stone, cold as ice.” With Merchant’s honeyed voice, it’s introspective and somewhat melancholy, reveling in wizened serenity but still coming off as less than self-assured.

The album’s first single, “Come On, Aphrodite,” is “an invocation to the goddess of love and passion,” according to Merchant, who sought to conjure an “all-consuming, sweet madness.” But it seems bereft of this passion, even with the addition of Abema Koomson-Davis from the Resistance Revival Chorus, whose vocals are complementary but muted. The video features Merchant strutting in a bare, stripped-down room, owning her age, her wisdom and her passion. “Come on, Aphrodite, I’m begging you, please,” she and Koomson-Davis implore, but their conviction doesn’t resonate.

The other songs flirt with beauty and agreeability, but nothing really stands out. “Narcissus” showcases Merchant’s ability to dip and soar through moods and melodies, but it also feels forgettable. “Hunting the Wren” is sparse and Celtic-inflected, sounding almost like a contrived dirge. In glimpses you might hear snatches of thoughtfulness and depth reminiscent of, say, Neko Case. But even the de-fanged “Tower of Babel,” with its affected horns and piano, feels far from the Gospel-tinged soul that it aspires to.

Merchant has the respect that her years in the business and her vocal talent have earned her. But what she offers on Keep Your Courage risks nothing and concedes all.