Life can be cruel sometimes. Radio One refused to give 10,000 Maniacs airplay because, in the wake of the Hungerford massacre, the name was deemed "insensitive, too much for our listeners". Too much for what and to whom, lead singer and composer Natalie Merchant wants to know. Her analysis of child abuse on one of the most stunning LPs this year, In My Tribe, shows responsible sensitivity in the face of blunt-edged parental possession:
"All these cold and rude things that you do I suppose you do because he belongs to you/And instead of love.... you've given him these cuts and sores that don't heal with time or with age", she sings with rich voiced frenzy on the standout track What's the Matter Here?
That family=security is the first myth this five-strong band explode, gingerly taking an uncomfortable subject, wrapping it round with soothing melody and tight uptempo folk/pop, only to mince it to death.
With the furor over Cleveland and every British penny'orth of double standard, "social workers don't do their jobs/do it too well", child abuse has never been more current. Natalie rues the day Ms. Vega beat her to the charts with it. "I remember when I met her, Luka hadn't done anything, and we'd written our song four months previous. I was happy to see another singer tackling the subject, 'sfunny, never before, then two at once, both women. We both agreed it'd never be played on the radio, and I guess she proved it wrong."
The 10,000 Maniacs are very much a roots band: radical, respectful, referential - referring to the upheavals, distortions and failures that signify their country. Rob Buck (guitarist), bassist Steven Gustafson, drummer Jerome Augustyniak and Dennis Drew (keyboards), with Natalie at the helm. Their 1985 debut LP The Wishing Chair was well received but lacking in foucs, and it's only now, with the second album, that they have found a potent and definite musical direction.
They sing of the centuries-old cowboy/Indian myths that have their place in folklore and on a Tokyo conveyor belt. "Is a cactus blooming there in every roadside stand/Where the big deal is cowboy gear sewn in Japan?" Natalie chants on The Painted Desert. She explores issues like the buying up of indigenous peoples, so that in the case of American Indians their culture is diluted and lost amongst plastic parody.
Likewise, A Campfire Song laments the loss of a special place close their home in Jamestown, New York State, a gorge covered with wildlife where they once went hiking and exploring. "But now," ruminates Rob, "it's torn apart: guys drive down there in four wheel pickups, shoot off pistols and drink Blue Riband. It shows the whole cowboy frontier mentality - there it is, it's free, I'm gonna get it, it's mine. I'll kill you if you want it."
One thing Michael Ryan clearly wasn't was Gun Shy. Hot on the heels of the track Peace Train, the Maniacs (a word, anyway, which originally maeant 'someone with ungovernable enthusiasm') deflate the myth of gun totin' military equalling maturity, in the slow, poignant lilt Gun Shy.
"I wrote it for my brothers who joined the army," Natalie says. "In America, the rite of passage for a boy is the army - lots of boys leave school thinking 'I want to go travel, away from everyone who knows me, tap in fast'. They do eight weeks of training, learn how to do 100 push ups and then 'I'm completely transformed now, I'm a Man'.
"That happened to my brothers - they were still emotionally children, except their bodies had changed and they had endured something. I gave them credit for that, but told them 'you still have a lot of growin' up to do'."
The urge to 'tap in fast' and experience each fad quickly as it comes is part of American culture the band feel alienated from. Their musical approach is slow, sure, solid - absorbing the three minute snatches of radio and elevator music that surrounds them, yet instead of regurgitating those influences willy nilly, they let them settle and consolidate until the result becomes a tight pop whole.
It's difficult when the culture you are invovled in dislikes depth.
"In America, people like things to fit very neatly," says Rob, "It's a categorical society where even irony has to be predictable." He outlines the homespun hogwash that somehow passes off as 'truth', the preponderance of Ollie North sincerity which makes a mockery of a sophisticated society. "The things that this country were based on got distorted out of proportion. The Constitution was originally written as a useful, philosphical document. It was never meant to be taken literally, and simplified to the point of ridiculousness."
Natalie says her favorite line in the Constitution is 'the pursuit of happiness'. For what and to whom? These 10,000 Maniacal troubadours are on an expedition to prove that young people peer beyond MTV and shooting pistols in the air or designer drugs into their veins, to comment realistically on what is around them: "We can only preserve this country, this land that we love, if we value it and understand that." They hope that music will jar or jolt people to consider the life that's going on beneath the pavement, that's curling up between the cracks, or insurrecitng itself in a not-too-distant state.
Which brings us to the heftiest myth of all. The question mark that hangs over America's doorstep, snuffing out any sense of it being 'The Land of the Free'. "It's funny," says Natalie, "that the Sandinista government in Nicaragua was based on the same system as ours - the 'rebellion against oppressors'. We happen to be the oppressor now against the rebelling colony."
During the summer the 10,000 Maniacs supported Billy Bragg in a benefit for medical aid in Nicaragua, a concert that raised over $16,000, and celebrated a country that despite the ravages of Yanqui Contras, has reduced illiteracy, distributed land, and started building up an egalitarian system based on community rather than conflict or competition. The band says "it's hard to align yourself with anyone with a gun, and that includes the Sandinistas, but America has reaped more than its share of Third World culture. It's lucky they got caught this time."
Acting as a counterbalance to the mass media image the US blithely sells to the world - Dynasty, Dallas, and Olliewood, the 10,000 Maniacs come as a welcome relief. Like the Muses, the Vegas, the Shocked before them, they're displaying a side to American culture which is sensitive rather than gun-obsessed, witty on levels that venture beyond the familiar, and on the face of things, utterly sane.