by: Andy Smith (pg 1G)
"I think of myself as a musician and not a celebrity," said Natalie Merchant. "Celebrity status is something you have to deliberately pursue - I couldn't imagine myself seeking that."
As the lead singer for 10,000 Maniacs, Merchant's pure vocals, twirling stage presence and political pronouncements made her the focal point of that band. Now she's left the Maniacs and gone solo; she'll play a sold-out show at the Strand in downtown Providence tonight.
Merchant shows no rancor when speaking of her former band. She points out that she joined the Maniacs, which started in the small city of Jamestown, N.Y., when she was just 17, and she and her former colleagues had been growing apart for some time. She also wanted to do all the songwriting herself, rather than in collaboration with the band.
(10,000 Maniacs, in the meantime, has regrouped, bringing back original guitarist John Lombardo and adding singer Mary Ramsey.)
Merchant released her first solo album, Tigerlily last year, and impressed the music business by signing on with manager Jon Landau, whose sole other client is Bruce Springsteen.
"I met with a lot of different managers, and he seemed the most knowledgeable and the most fair," she said. "We're an unlikely pair. He grew up in New York City in leftist circles, which gives him a political perspective that I never had. I'm a working-class girl from a small town in rural New York."
To record Tigerlily, Merchant assembled a band of young musicians, went to Woodstock, N.Y., and decided to produce the record herself.
"Records are expensive to make, and taking the responsibilty for such an expensive project is a scary thing," Merchant said. "The record company (Elektra) was nervous about it."
Merchant used a veteran engineer, John Holbrook, who had worked with the Band and Peter Tosh and was familiar with some of the vintage equipment Merchant wanted to try.
"I wanted a very natural sound. A lot of my favorite records were made in the mid-'70s, and I used some of the same technology. Van Morrison's Moondance is a record I've always loved, one of the best soul records I've ever heard."
Tigerlily is a more stripped down, meditative record than the last few Maniacs' records, although so far the singles have been upbeat songs, Carnival and Wonder.
The latter ("to know I must be one of the wonders of god's own creation") seems like a huge ego trip at first, until Merchant points out that it was written about a handicapped women. The current video seems to expand that concept to embrace all women.
"I don't really like videos. They deprive a song of its versatility, and the life they can have that's much larger than what's on the screen," Merchant said. "But they can help explain to people who you are very quickly."
Much of Merchant's album has a sombre tone.
Beloved Wife, written about her grandmother's death, is almost unbearably sad. Jealousy and Seven Years ("damn you betrayer/how you lied") seeth with the rage of a spurned lover. Even the cowboy quickly abandons his lover in Cowboy Romance.
The longest song on the record, at eight minutes, is I May Know the Word a stark meditation on the cost of moral indifference. River castigates the media for exploiting the death of River Phoenix: "your vulture's candor/ your casual slander/ you destroy his life." [webmaster's note: this is not how the lyric to River goes. The correct line is "your vulture's candor/your casual slander/you murder his memory"]
Merchant said she was just getting to know Phoenix. "I didn't know him extremely well, but we were becoming close about the time that he died. I felt he should be given the same respect anyone else should be given."
Unlike some of Merchant's work with 10,000 Maniacs, the songs on Tigerlily don't overtly address political issues. That hardly means she has stopped working for causes she cares about - a few weeks ago she was in Albany to lobby New York Gov. George Pataki on environmental issues.
"They (environmentalists) felt I might have some influence," Merchant said. "So I guess there is a positive aspect to celebrity."