by: Stephen Williams

Natalie Merchant and her upstate New York band never were the punks or the hipsters that the name 10,000 Maniacs implied. But early in the group's career - five years ago - the majority of the pop public probably couldn't have differentiated among 10,000 Maniacs and Bad Brains or Frogs in a Box.

But with their third Elektra album, released this month, the five 10,000 Maniacs are perched to dive in and take a long dip in the mainstream musical pool. Along with her mates, singer/songwriter Merchant, who said in a recent interview that "We've learned quite a bit" lately, has taken late '80s folk-rock to lyrical heights in Blind Man's Zoo.

The new record ought to allow them to outdistance a persistent rap as a "thinking person's" band and entrench the Maniacs as one of the country's most original and uncompromising bands.

Those qualities will be accentuated this season, when rock dinosaurs will again walk the earth - the arenas and stadiums of the Western Hemisphere, at least. The Who, the Rolling Stones, the Doobie Brothers and Jefferson Airplane (who had a later incarnation as the Jefferson Starship) will give the summer a sense of history, but the Maniacs - who will play Radio City Music Hall on June 28 and 29 - will present a glimpse of the future.

In a time when merchandising makes for sales, Merchant, who is the leader of the group, makes few concessions to commercialism. She fits no neat package, no sexual fashion a la Madonna or Paula Abdul or the preciousness of Edie Brickell. Rather, she offers the earthiness of Tracy Chapman (who not long ago opened shows for the Maniacs) and the cosmic reach of Ireland's ethereal Enya.

For some artists, a preoccupation with "significant" themes conspires against them: Even strong melodies can't diffuse heavy-handed message music, unless the focus of the message is tack-sharp, as in Little Steven's virulent anti-apartheid anthem, Sun City.

In Blind Man's Zoo, the second Maniacs album produced by the Peter Asher, best known for producing James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, Merchant again turns her luminous poetry toward serious matters. Poison in the Well, with music by keyboardist Dennis Drew, was written long before Exxon dumped oil in Alaska, but the lyrics are prescient: "O, they tell us there's poison in the well, that someone's been a bit untidy and there's been a small spill... all that it amounts to is a tear in a salted sea."

Merchant takes on mismanaged funds, as in the Iran-contra affair, in Please Forgive Us. Hateful Hate is a graphic piece about the rape of the land of Africa, and inspired the symbol of the album, an elephant.

In the best Merchant style, Eat for Two, with its almost jaunty melody, comes off like a blithe ditty about mothering; it was, in fact, written "to convey the anxiety of a teenage girl who is pregnant and doesn't want to be," Merchant said from Amsterdam in a recent phone conversation. "The melody is supposed to convey the naivete of the young girl, the music has a swelling pulse to it. It rises and falls in the way that the girl is thinking obsessively about her physical condition."

Blind Man's Zoo represents a maturation of style and musicianship as well as material. Founded eight years ago in upstate Jamestown - described by someone as "a seven-hour drive from everywhere" - the Maniacs originally numbered six, until rhythm guitarist John Lombardo left the band in 1986. Merchant, who is 25, now shares the writing with Drew, guitarist Rob Buck and drummer Jerry Augustyniak. Steve Gustafson on bass fills out the lineup.

Initially, the Maniacs covered bits of reggae, British rock and bluegrass and made waves in England with their first full-length album, Secrets of the I Ching, recorded for $500. British producer Joe Boyd, who, coincidentally, had worked with Merchant's kindred spirits in Richard Thompson and the late Sandy Denny, lent some weight when he produced the band's The Wishing Chair album.

But it was Merchant's riveting, amorphous stage manner - her luxurious, self-involved dancing, her cryptic interpretation of the words, her trance-like state - that captivated her growing audience. Merchant says her movements aren't contrived, but simply an abandoning of inhibitions.

"Convention prevents us from behaving the way we really feel inside," she said. "And sometimes music is so transcending. I can express anger in a way on stage that, if I did it offstage, I might be sent to a lunatic asylum."

Not that she loses touch completely. "I concentrate on the music, and the lyrics are pretty complex in that most of the choruses don't repeat," she said. "I have to keep remembering what part of the song I'm in because the rest of the band is listening for me to lead them. If I make mistakes, it's a catastrophe."

In My Tribe, (1987) the band's third album and first with Asher, has sold about 500,000 copies so far. But for Merchant - whose idea of materialism is collecting antique postcards - the concept of gold records and Top 40 hits is way overblown.

"I don't think any of us have taken this too seriously, the television shows and all that," she said in soft voice. "We never intended to be professional musicians. What confounds us most is that we find ourselves being able to support ourselves for the first time in our lives: like, being able to pay rent on our own apartments. Some of the men in the band have finally bought cars and gotten married. We never conceived we'd be able to do these things as musicians."

In some ways that may be less obvious to their home-grown fans, the Maniacs have taken pains to broaden their accessibility. The liner notes and lyrics to Blind Man's Zoo will be marketed in Italian, French, German, Spanish and Japanese translations. "Many of the people may still not understand," said Merchant. "But if they enjoy the music, it means I'm communicating."

One way that 10,000 Maniacs will make a pointed statement during their upcoming tour is through their decision to delete Cat Stevens' Peace Train from their playlist. Merchant sang Peace Train on the Tribe album, and the band released it as a single. But they put it away after Stevens, a convert to Islam, announced he would support the assassination of Satanic Verses author Salmon Rushdie.