After more than a decade and eight albums as a member of 10,000 Maniacs, the 31-year-old singer quit at the group's peak. Its 1993 swan song, Unplugged, has sold nearly 2 million copies; the preceding Our Time in Eden, 1.5 million.
Merchant's distinctive voice put the folk-pop band on the map with 1987's breakthrough, In My Tribe and its hits Like the Weather and What's the Matter Here?
But as she grew with the group she'd joined at 17, she chafed. "I'd learned how to be a musician, a performer, and (I thought) maybe I could have a little more control over all this," she says.
The new Tigerlily is all hers: she assembled a backing band of young players, wrote all the words and music and acted as producer.
In its second week on Billboard's album chart, it's No. 14. Unplugged peaked at No. 13, Eden at No. 28; seems the more mature Merchant is sane as can be.
Some reviewers call her solo debut her most personal album; she demurs. "I was working in this direction before," she says, citing Eden (with hits These Are Days and Candy Everybody Wants), on which her lyrics became less overtly political.
"The reputation of being a political writer might be because I wrote so much about victimization, like (1989's) Poison in the Well or The Big Parade, the story of a youth who lost his father in Vietnam and visited the memorial in Washington, D.C. "I just picked one young man and told his story," she says. "The music that affects me as most emotional is about the way people relate to each other and involve themselves in others' lives."
The new album's Beloved Wife, the lament of a long-married man just widowed, is about her grandparents. "He passed away two days after she died. It's one of the most important love stories I was ever near," says Merchant, whose divorced mother worked low-paying jobs and raised four children in "isolated, economically depressed" Jamestown, N.Y.
Though she cares as much as ever about causes - especially environmental and women's and children's issues - "the way people relate to each other from the point of view of power - people victimized by the abuse of power - might be my way of looking at the world."
Relaxing a bit, she notes, "It isn't until I do interviews that I start analyzing. The only fear I had about this record was that it would be taken as my defining album. I feel I'll probably be changing continuously."
So does her image: the whirling, thrift-shop waif took on a pretty polish in recent years, but Tigerlily's close-up photos show her unadorned. "It's important to introduce myself to people" as an individual, she says. She likes the stark portrait because "the danger otherwise is that you appear frozen in time. I wanted it to look like it could have been made 20 years ago or 20 years from now."
But, she hastens to add, "I'm a woman. I like dresses and looking sexy or alluring - I've done subsequent photo sessions with all that." Maybe she'll wear a favorite designer - Agnes B or Dries van Noten - on David Letterman's show July 25, though she says, "I'm still thrifty; I try to get discounts!"
On the eve of a promotional trip to Europe, she's worried about leaving "the family": a dog and two cats, one a "real feisty" new kitten. "The older cat isn't getting along with the kitten, and even though I have friends coming to stay here and care for them . . . It reminds me of when my little brother was born. I was 5, and it was hard for me to not be the baby anymore. And I wasn't even allowed to hold the baby 'cause I was too young."
Growing up poor might have contributed to a social conscience that prompts her to predict an increase in women's and children's issues "as the Republicans continue to control things. They don't see how vulnerable poor women and children are. I can't stand to see people blamed for their poverty and punished for it."