10,000 Maniacs might seem like a strange name for an international pop group, but rock 'n' roll is a strange business.

What is stranger is that despite the odd tag, lifted from an old splatter flick, the Maniacs make some of the most popular music around.

Stranger still, considering their name, is that their music is riddled with concern for humanity and leans as much toward folk and literature as it does rock.

In reality, there are only five Maniacs: guitarist Robert Buck, keyboardist Dennis Drew, drummer Jerry Augustyniak, bassist Stephen Gustafson, and vocalist Natalie Merchant, the darlings of Jamestown, Chautauqua County.

Wednesday night at the Palace Theatre, the band makes a proud and triumphant return to Albany. Triumphant because they are making their Palace Theatre debut, and this is a band that in its salad days made frequent stops at the tiny, now defunct, 288 Lark club before moving on to the now defunct Duck Soup, the now defunct JB's Theater and the Troy Music Hall before finally hitting the Palace. Proud because, since the music hall show, Rob Buck has relocated from his Jamestown birthplace to downtown Albany. This is his first gig in his adopted city.

"Albany is nice," Buck laughs, "because it is a big city, but I can still feel like a big carp in the pond."

What makes the Maniacs so special to their loyal fans is a chemistry of elements, any one of which would make a band unique.

There's the lyricist-vocalist who really does read more like a poet than a rocker. Merchant is closer to Sylvia Plath than Mick Jagger. Never mind that she dances like a dervish and couches her words in a voice like spun gold.

Guitarist Buck paints with his strings rather than playing them, forcing out sheets of sound with his hands and a battery of effects, rather than just plucking notes.

In an age of blibs, bleeps and bloobs, keyboardist Dennis Drew plays piano and organ, for real. And, finally, there's a rhythm section - Augustyniak and Gustafson - who are equally at home playing funk, punk, folk or reggae, but blend them into one streamlined sound.

To their fans it just means magic.

Buck says he feels the band's Jamestown roots, away from the direct influence of music metropolises like Los Angeles and New York City, helped develop the Maniac sound.

"It was a very secluded environment that allowed us to develop on our own."

Buck also cites the surge of punk rock as an integral part of the band's makeup. It is a story becoming as familiar to the younger thirtysomething generation as seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan was to an older thirtysomething generation years before.

"I say the stuff that really started it off was back in '78, '79 and '80, listening to bands like the Clash, the Mekons, the Sex Pistols, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Toots and Maytals ... that kind of music. ... I think what it said to people was that this music was great, but we're not like Yes. We're not virtuoso musicians, this isn't un-updatable. I think what it said to a lot of people was this is real emotion and feeling, but you can do it, too. I said, 'Hey, man, this is great, and not only is it great but I can do it.'"

Somehow all those disparate influences resulted in 10,000 Maniacs' reggae-tinged independent debut album, Secrets of the I Ching, that gave way to the almost-pastoral folkiness of its major label debut, The Wishing Chair.

The band found its true voice on 1987's Peter Asher-produced In My Tribe, which after a slow start eventually hit with a bang that knocked the music world on its collective ear.

The Maniacs had arrived.

By the time the record finished its run on the charts, it had snagged a new legion of listeners, topped college radio, landed the group performances on "The Tonight Show," "Latenight With David Letterman" and "Saturday Night Live" and yielded minor hits and videos with Like the Weather, andWhat's the Matter Here.

The latest tour is in support of a brand new Elektra album, Blind Man's Zoo, which has virtually exploded out of the box still riding the crest of the wave that In My Tribe started.

This is not rock for the common denominator. Chanteuse Merchant filled In My Tribe with vibrant images of child abuse, illiteracy, ennui, the foolishness of war and alcoholism.

Blind Man's Zoo is no different in that respect, with Merchant tackling teen pregnancy (Eat for Two), Vietnam (The Big Parade), industrial toxins (Poison in the Well), governmental imperialism and intervention (Hateful Hate and Please Forgive Us) and religion (Jubilee) as some of its subjects.

Buck personally feels closer to this record. The group again worked with Linda Ronstadt's producer Asher, but this time more on their own terms - including recording in downstate New York rather than Los Angeles.

"It is a better album anyway," Buck says. "Last time out, we had to make an album that sounded like us but was a little slicker, production-wise. Our first album, The Wishing Chair, which I liked, certainly didn't get any radio play - probably in part because of lack of proper production techniques. So with In My Tribe, we went that way. And we may have gone just a little too far and lost some of the feeling or emotion, which is what we tried to go back to on this album without losing any of the production values we learned on Tribe."

The record and the band's quirky image as quiet renegades garner them a feature in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

They come to the Albany date - the second on their six-month U.S. tour - from a short sprint through England and Ireland where they are regarded not only as superstars but quite literally as heroes, remaining darlings of the fickle English music press for an impressive length of time.