by: Paul Hampel
Her Shift In Style Came With Age, She Says
Natalie Merchant was PC when PC was cool. Political correctness is not so cool anymore, and Merchant is not the hyper-correct girl she used to be. But she has not forsaken the core ideals that made her the de facto spokeswoman for numerous fashionable causes as the leader of 10,000 Maniacs.
"I believe that everyone is born completely innocent and that's the thing that makes me feel hopeful," she said, speaking by phone from a hotel in Boston.
"But there are so many opportunities for corruption that the innocent have to meet, so many situations that are corrupting, whether within their families, patriarchal institutions, lending establishments, religious institutions, greed, the streets."
Yes, baby, it's a wild world, but Merchant is adapting to it successfully as a solo act.
Tigerlily, her first work without the angular, mid-tempo pop backing of her longtime partners, 10,000 Maniacs, is thriving.
"10,000 Maniacs had become so stale to me," she said. "I joined the band when I was 17 and as I neared 30 I knew it was time to break away.
"It was a collaboration that allowed everyone in the band to fully explore each other's capabilities, but it got to the point where I didn't inspire them and they weren't inspiring me."
Her hit song Carnival has been in dizzying rotation on VH-1 and modern rock radio stations for weeks.
"The song reflects the moral dilemma in walking a block in New York City," Merchant said.
"I live in Manhattan, and there's so much there that I celebrate. Participating in street life in the city makes you feel a part of the world like no place else. But there's a lot of brutality, insensitivity, and pain on the streets of New York too."
A little of Merchant's life colors all of her songs, from the beautiful, but bitter strains of Jealousy (a You Oughta Know for the thinking crowd) to Beloved Wife, about a widower dreading life alone after 50 years of marriage, a fate that befell one of the singer's relatives ("I don't know for certain/How I'll live my life/Now alone without my beloved wife")."About five percent of each song is about me, so I don't consider them autobiographical, though my experiences may serve as the impetus. I have an imagination and I try to expose myself to other people's lives."
Where 10,000 Maniacs fairly hop-scotched through an album, Merchant and her new group-Jennifer Turner, guitars and backing vocals, Peter Yanowitz, drums and Barrie Maguire, bass and 12-string guitar-lope bluesily along in a fashion that suits Merchant's newfound penchant for the sounds of a bygone era.
"Some of the music is a tribute to a style of music that I really loved, that had its origins in dark clubs in the South, music that was basically about seduction, sex," she said.
Merchant has developed a stage routine conducive to the flirtatious grooves. "I've retired my whirling dervish style of dancing," she said. "My dancing is a lot more subtle and sensual. The Maniacs' music inspired me to hop up and down, but my dancing is now centered around my hips."
Merchant bristled when asked how she reacted to the plethora of media slams about her televised performance at the opening of the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland last month. She covered an old Dinah Washington tune, complete with the new hip-shake dance.
"The media hated it? Well, thanks for being the bearer of bad news. I think I'll end this interview now," she threatened, before relenting to add:
"My display of sexuality is threatening to some people. But as Emma Goldman once said, 'If I can't dance to your revolution, I'm not coming.'"