by Casey Seiler

These are strange days for Natalie Merchant.

Talk to her for 20-odd minutes and the adjective will come up a half-dozen times. It's strange to have a hit debut single (Carnival), strange to be hiring her own lawyer, strange to be playing with a new band on her first solo tour.

But strange seems to work for Merchant. What other conclusion can you come to about a singer who leaves a hit band just after one of its most successful years?

"I was a large part of the success of 10,000 Maniacs," says Merchant. "I felt that anyone who liked the band would be interested in what I would do solo."

She was right. With Carnival all over radio, MTV and VH-1, Merchant's album Tigerlily (on Elektra) has gone platinum and collected positive reviews from the Boston Globe (which compared it to the work of Van Morrison) and the hard-rockin' critics of The Wall Street Journal ("a gem ... it has the presence of a timeless classic").

Merchant's triumph must have seemed a lot less certain a year ago, when Merchant announced her departure from 10,000 Maniacs just as the band's cover of Patti Smith's Because the Night (from their MTV Unplugged CD) was all over the radio. After a decade together, the Jamestown, N.Y.-based band and Merchant parted ways.

"Luckily I wasn't just a chick singer, you know?" she laughed.

Instead of famous solo flameouts like David Lee Roth, Merchant models her new career on the success of Peter Gabriel and David Byrne. "I think of myself more in their category - people who played a major part in a band (but) who had other interests."

Before those interests led her back into the studio, Merchant retreated to a cabin with no power, no plumbing in upstate New York. "I didn't know anyone there," she says. Merchant spent her time writing and studying the mechanics of the music industry "with an eye," she says, "toward becoming an adult."

"I find great peace of mind in being independent, having no contract, no manager ... but there are certain things required of an artist."

One of those things was assembling a hand-picked touring band after playing with the same people for a decade. So far, Merchant's backing quintet have had their hands full playing to larger houses: "Most of the people in this band have played mostly in bar bands, so for these guys to play in a theater is really incredibly exciting," she says.

Meanwhile, Merchant has been adjusting to playing to smaller crowds than the stadium-sized audiences drawn by 10,000 Maniacs at their peak.

"Call me old-fashioned, but I specifically requested that we play places with about 3,000 seats. A lot of the new songs are intimate, so I think they're better served by a small environment."

Will she keep the same players on her next project, or even on a future tour? Merchant can't decide.

"I don't want to get into the for-life situation that a lot of bands get into," she said.