Before she embarks on her solo projects (with Elektra), Merchant is promoting the Maniacs kiss-off album Unplugged (WEA) *7, which was recorded earlier this year for the MTV show. As the band did the second-ever Unplugged, this acoustic album serves as both a homecomming and a goodbye, reworking a selection of Maniacs tracks. Drawing heavily from their two strongest albums, In My Tribe and Our Time in Eden, the tone is less headlong than the originals. What's the Matter Here?, Merchant's cry against child abuse, is less sharp and campaigning, softened here by a country banjo, while Candy Everybody Wants, sidles along minus the self-consciously funky JB horns. More than a mere nostalgia trip, Unplugged has the relaxed, assured air of 13 years and old hands.

"It was an exciting challenge re-writing songs for the show. Playing the songs we've known so thoroughly over the years as acoustic rather than electric, we saw them in a completely new light". Notable is the single, a cover of Patti Smith's Because the Night, here reworked as folk-rock, with Merchant's trademark rich vocals giving it a fresh slant.

For now she's stirring her own eccentric witch's brew. "Over the next few months I'll be cooking, repairing furniture and gardening; then the point will come when I transfer that to songwriting. It's a magical process".