Justice’s live show is an integral part of the French dance outfit’s raison d’etre. Aware of this reliance, they’ve spent the past decade punctuating their studio releases with live recordings that demonstrate how the duo’s songs take on new forms and resonances with an audience. Now, Justice are bringing those reinterpreted live versions into the studio for their latest release, Woman Worldwide.
Susanna comes late in the sequence of Handel’s oratorios but in some ways the composer looks back in it to his experience of Italian opera. It largely comprises a sequence of arias (many in the repeated, da capo form of opera seria) as it relates the story from the Biblical Apocrypha of Susanna who is falsely accused of adultery and eventually vindicated through the clever judicial manoeuvrings of the young prophet Daniel.
The collection comprises ten discs, including all eight of her solo studio albums from the past three decades; Butterfly, a new studio set featuring four new songs and six reinterpreted selections from her catalog, all arranged for string quartet; and Rarities, a collection of fifteen rare and previously unreleased tracks recorded between 1998 and 2017, which offers a unique view of Merchant's creative experimentation through home studio demos, album outtakes, live tracks, and collaborations with diverse artists like Billy Bragg, David Byrne, The Chieftains, Cowboy Junkies, and Amy Helm.