by Tim Appelo
In a realm ruled by sex merchandising a la Madonna and Whitney Houston, the rock band 10,000 Maniacs stands out as a voice of reason. The name suggests a crazed pack of thugs who tune up on chain saws instead of guitars. But in fact, 10,00 Maniacs comprises four mild-mannered guys and a meditative young woman from Jamestown in upstate New York - "so far north it's Midwest" says keyboard player Dennis Drew.
The Maniacs (Drew, Robert Buck, Steven Gustafson and Jerome Augustyniak) are led by Natalie Merchant, the most intelligent, original rock singer-songwriter in years. Because Merchant hit soon after Suzanne Vega, she's often compared with that folkie chanteuse, who improbably cracked the Top Ten with a song about child abuse. Merchant sings a nouveau-folk tune about child abuse, too, and tackles topics even more outre: illiteracy, alcoholism, Andrew Jackson's Cherokee genocide policy. But she's a more compelling presence than Vega - she could be "the next next major voice in popular music," according to GQ rock critic Stephen Fried, who hails her odd lyrics as "poetry in commotion."
The band raids an eclectic variety of musical traditions with the gleeful abandon of kids rummaging in a circus trunk, and Merchant's marvelous voice blends elements of Chrissie Hynde, Laura Nyro and Sandy Denny, in a strangely phrased style quite her own. Onstage, she's a kinetic whirligig with an eccentrically political spin. Her new song Gun Shy, about her real-life little brother's enlistment in the army, maybe the first catchy anti-war single since U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday.
Merchant rejects the label of feminist songwriter, but her point of view has an unmistakably humane and feminine take, evident in lines like Gun Shy's bitter conclusion; "They're so good at making soldiers, but they're not as good at making men". Merchant is convinced that women are remaking rock and roll - without the machismo. "There are a lot of responsible women in music today who don't participate in the vacuous sexist imagery that makes for quick popularity. In our company, Elektra, women have stood up at board meetings and said. 'Look, Motley Crue's video has naked women rubbing themselves up and down poles - this is absurd when we have acts like 10,000 Maniacs on the label.' So there's an infiltration going on." Sales of the new Maniacs album, In My Tribe, just broke six digits, tripling their career total. Thanks to TV stints with the arbiters of hipness - David Letterman, Jay Leno's Tonight Show and MTV - the Maniacs may face an imminent avalanche of major money. But that's not the point of their efforts, says Merchant. "We're more interested in moving people than we are in moving units."