"The best LP I've heard this year" reckons the old man of the airwaves John Peel who, communicating his opinion of Secrets of the I Ching to its originators, addressed his postcard to a private house in Jamestown, upstate New York - birthplace of Lucille Ball and home of 10,000 Maniacs.

Well, six for sure. Robert Buck (guitar, devices); Natalie Merchant (voice); Dennis Drew (keyboards); Steven Gustafson (guitar, bass); Jerome Augustyniak (percussion) and J.C. Lombardo (guitar, bass) have been 10,000 Maniacs for just over two years now. They've spent their time gigging incessantly, concentrating on the southern states and Georgia in particular (home of REM and thus the hottest sounds around) with just enough time snatched between dates to record a debut EP Human Conflict Number Five and their first full length vinyl outing, the I Ching album. Both are on their own Christian Burial label.

The I Ching sound is mesmerising rather than maniacal, blending rhythmic devices borne of reggae and calypso (culled from time spent playing Mighty Diamonds covers for a living whilst dues-paying as a bar room band) with more conventional 'white' popisms - laced with some of the most fascinatingly forlorn lyrics ever to be bonded to such an unassuming aural backdrop.

In Natalie Merchant the Maniacs have a Young Marble Giant - winsome, occaisonally withering but never wet - and a profound if confounding lyricist. To say it is often difficult to tell whether Merchant is singing in English is less a rebuke to her diction as an observation on her own stylised pronounciation which, however demurely alluring, must sometimes work against the effectiveness of her garret-land poetry - on Katrina's Fair for instance.

Merchant's lyrics peddle misery cloaked in mystery, rendered all the more ironic by the comparatively up-beat melodies. They're also intent on feeding a few thousand superiority complexes - the realist/surrealist debate in painting is given the poptone treatment with Poor De Chirico - and a global neuroses, the threat of nuclear war. Grey Victory is perhaps the best example of the Maniacs' fragile art. Lines like 'Faces scorched of all familar bearing' swim against an ever-rising tide of impish melody to create a frothy confection of conflicting moods.

Legitimate irony or a careless trivialising of important issues? At the other end of a crackling transatlantic telephone line, Dennis Drew is defensive.

"I don't think we're trivialising anything. We don't like silly little songs so we write about what we think matters, and a song like Grey Victory is a reflection of that.

"Anyway, not all our songs are about politics, maybe only four or five." Point taken. Amongst the hundreds of gigs 10,000 Maniacs have played over the last two years have been numerous benefits for the U.S. Freeze campaign, an attempt to halt the escalating arms race by calling for an end to the nuclear weapons build-up. So what keeps the Maniacs working so hard?

"It's a question of having the substance to survive. We're not a particularly trendy band so to get the substance we've got to keep gigging because only that way can we build up a following and in turn grow. We're not interested in being the sort of band that just makes records. That's like punching the clock every morning when you walk into the studio. We're a living band, 10,000 Maniacs is all we talk about and just about all we think about."

Not surprising, considering the Maniacs are very much of an 'indie' outfit. The campus recording studio of a nearby college was used to record the Human Conflict EP and Secrets of the I Ching and only a few thousand copies of each were pressed up - although more copies of I Ching will be supplied to meet extra demand. Although neither records are yet available in Britain, a licensing deal currently being negotiated with Rough Trade should see the album released over here early in the new year.

Finally, with the band's proximity to New York (a mere eight hours drive away!) do 10,000 Maniacs consider themselves an 'East Coast' band in the Talking Heads tradition?

"Not really, we're just a small town band. We're closer to the Mid West actually and all the bands we like are West Coast bands like the Dream Syndicate."

All the bands?