A soaring career hasn't stopped 10,000 Maniacs from challenging their audience

by: Michael Hollett

For Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs anger lives next door to hope. And that's why, at a time when their career is in overdrive, they have unleashed their darkest album yet. It's also their best, startling in its brooding vision, tempered and twisted by Merchant's lush, smooth vocals.

While their career soars, the world still chums. Bolstered by sales near a million on their last release, In My Tribe - it sold steadily for almost two years - the Maniacs have produced their most confident album. Called Blind Man's Zoo, it compels with gripping music and troubling, fascinating images, without embracing pop formulas.

In Merchant, the Maniacs have an irresistible front person for their careful, guitar-driven sound. With a stunning voice and riveting stage presence, she could comfortably power a band up the charts embracing pop confections - working the sunny side of the street. But the band steeps itself in probing narrative songs offering couplets instead of choruses. On their latest effort, 10,000 Maniacs shine a light on the face of the American underclass and give form to the victims of U.S. foreign policy, fleshing out the individual tales. In a world where the policy-makers and perpetrators are all too well known, Merchant and the Maniacs identify and celebrate the acted-upon.

"Maybe I'm just too keen an observer," Merchant muses in a Sutton Place Hotel restaurant, just days before beginning the tour that brings her and the Maniacs back to Toronto for their Concert Hall date tomorrow night (Friday).

"A lot of people would probably assume that with the success that we had with the last album that we would all be in a very cheerfull frame of mind. But just because we sold a lot of albums, that doesn't change other people's lives.

"I am very happy with my life," she clarifies, "and I enjoy what I do. I feel very fulfilled. I sound like Mary Tyler Moore now, but it's true. But most of the reason why I feel that way is because I am speaking for people who do not have a voice and it gives me a role. I couldn't just stop doing that."

Crowd detail

And so Merchant, the band's lyricist and primary songwriter, continues to see the detail in the crowd, selecting the individual story that reflects the larger issue. Merchant carries herself with the confidence of someone in touch with her beliefs. This gives her movements an easy grace whether she's cutting a swath through the crowded lobby or powerfully moving across the stage, twirling and snapping her body not demurely but with a flick and crack, like a whip.

"There was a concerted effort to make this album sound thematically consistent. I didn't want to include songs that were that light - I wanted it to be a powerful and dark album and I think it is."

The exception is the band's first single Trouble Me, a smooth celebration of friendship that Merchant describes as the balm on the album.

"I felt like there was a side to 10,000 Maniacs, a more somber side - a more sober side that would show occasionally. But it felt like we had to exorcise it from ourselves, remove it. There was a rage about particular things in the world that I needed to express. So many things, they just eat at me and I think that they eat at other people too.

"I don't want to alienate people from the start by making them feel this album is so dismal they won't want to pick it up. As furious as it is, Blind Man's Zoo is about care and concern because if I wasn't concerned and didn't care, I wouldn't write about these things. There's a beauty in attempting to see these things.

"Being blind to it all is more hopeless."

Taking her seat by the restaurant's street-level window, Merchant sets her smoldering brown eyes loose on the room. She spies an elderly woman nursing tea and nibbling a sandwich as if the crusts should be removed. She's carefully dressed with white gloves and a crisp hat that reflect her British roots. "I love women like that," says Merchant quietly.

Maniac music

Merchant finds it difficult to speak in generalities. She often illustrates her points about the Maniacs' music by citing individual tunes. In Dust Bowl she tells of a "not quite destitute" single mother's attempts to satisfy her children's cravings and needs.

"The song is not entirely tragic but I think it is something people can understand. And for people who don't understand - we have lots of people buying our music who can afford CDs and CD players, things this woman could never consider - they probably don't have that much contact with women like the one in this song. Like Tracy Chapman's Fast Car, maybe a song like this changes people's attitudes slightly towards people who don't have what they have when they hear of someone speak of it through music. Because music is so powerful."

So why don't 10,000 Maniacs score the revolution, create slogan-rich marching songs designed to mobilize?

"It's important to use individuals in these songs because people respond to the stories of individuals. There's not a single person on this continent who would blame the poor for their situation if they could speak to someone who has been trapped in the cycle of poverty."

Could these socially charged songs just be this year's hulahoop, the latest phase designed to garner commercial success?

"I never want to be in the situation where I am trying to second-guess the pop music scene. I just write what I am concerned about and if people identify with it or not, that's not my concern. I think that's the record company's concern because we would sell less records.

"My desire is to communicate."

As cause-oriented songs pick up larger audiences and bigger sales, Merchant admits this could become the next fad.
"Unless someone is serious or sincere, I don't think it should become camp. It shouldn't become popular to write issues songs just because it's in vogue. That's when it is trivialized. Occasionally this does happen and when it does I don't condemn those people I just disregard them. If there's not consistency, that's what I would question."

At the same time, Merchant resists succumbing to cynicism. She knows her songs are reaching people, particularly a young audience, a thought that heartens her.

"A lot of these people writing about the music scene and how boring it's becoming, that too many bands are writing about social issues, these are people in their mid-30s, mid-40s, they've been writing about music a long time. They've watched so much come and go but to these kids, it's all new and it's about their lives and their time.

"There are lots of kids right now who didn't grow up listening to Bob Dylan records. My lyrics might be their first introduction to music that has any validity, to music that has any seriousness."

But seriousness should not be mistaken for cheerlessness. Merchant teems with compact charisma. A smile crosses her face easily and even discussing depressing issues she can find a reason to smile.

She laughs as a sidewalk full of private school girls roars by the window scrutinizing the late afternoon diners. "I always look in restaurant windows," she says, and it comes as no surprise. Merchant could easily be a part of the crowd on the street as they bounce along, arms swinging at their side in short plaid skirts and buckle-up shoes. But Merchant's skirt is navy blue and unlike the steady stream of girls she doesn't smoke.

"I thought young people weren't smoking anymore," she says in obvious pain at the cigarettes she sees poking from between the fingers of their busy hands.

Heading out on tour into a music scene increasingly crowded with fresh new female faces, Merchant braces for the next hype sweepstakes.

"You mean 'Women In Rock'", she says in her best, sonorous newscaster voice. "How many magazines this season are going to 'Men In Rock' stories? I think it's on the verge of being sexist to single us out like that and put us all in one category.

"These are women who write and sing songs and I think that is the only similarity between us. I think it's really unfair, it's kind of insulting not to be considered on anindividual basis. But I think maybe it's the nature of media, this desire to categorize.

Less Crues

"It is encouraging that record labels are signing more women. I wish they would hire more women to work in the companies and at more senior positions - then there would be less Motley Crues. If women held all the A and R jobs in music (the talent scouts) then I don't think heavy metal would exist," she says with a smile. And as they prepare to be reintroduced to their fans, and meet new ones, Merchant contemplates the Maniacs' success.

"It makes us more confident because what we are doing is being accepted and enjoyed by a lot of people. After all those years of writing the songs and playing them and never being sure if we were going to be able to continue doing this, I think the last album secured a large group of people who enjoy what we are doing.