Fighting a reputation as an overly earnest, humourless artist, Natalie Merchant visits her tickle trunk
by: Shawn Conner (page 79)
For the package for her album Ophelia, as well as a short film shot to accompany the record, singer Natalie Merchant visited her tickle trunk and dressed up as a variety of characters: an Aryan jock, a severe suffragette, a Russian circus performer, a seductive actress, a pious nun, and a cigarette-smoking mob wife. "I wanted to challenge people's perceptions of me as an artist and as an individual," says Merchant, on the telephone from Hawaii, where she's on vacation. "Maybe because I've been doing this so long people think they have an idea of who I am. I felt like it was kind of a limited description, so I was trying to challenge people with the package."
It's understandable that Merchant would want to challenge some perceptions; over the years, she's earned the reputation of being an excessively earnest, humourless artist. Whether the package will have the desired effect remains to be seen, but one thing's certain - Merchant isn't sweating over it. Her first solo album, Tigerlily, went multiplatinum, and Ophelia has sold more than a million copies so far. Last year she co-headlined many of the dates on the Lilith Fair tour, and the 35-year-old singer counts among her fans talk-show host David Letterman. ("He's been really supportive," she says. "He gets all shy when I'm on the show, and he won't talk to me much.")
Not bad for a singer some wrote off following her departure from the successful folk-rock outfit 10,000 Maniacs. But by the time she quit, Merchant was ready for a change. She was just 17 when she joined five male university students and music fans to form the long-running band, and she had known for some time that she wanted to be doing something different when she turned 30.
Since she left the band, her music has reflected an increasingly middle-of-the-road approach whose roots lie in the Maniacs' breakthrough album, In My Tribe. On earlier albums, such as The Wishing Chair, the Jamestown, New York, group's original sound was a distinctive blend of punk energy, traditional folk instrumentation, and Merchant's distinctive, velvety voice and sly, poetic lyrics. But by the time of 1987's In My Tribe, the third record, the band was sounding more like 10,000 Marigolds than maniacs - thanks in part to the Califomia-based ear of producer and Linda Ronstadt crony Peter Asher.
Yet there was no denying the songwriting skill evident on that record. Although the band dropped the ball with a pedestrian follow-up, Blind Man's Zoo, it recovered somewhat for one final studio album, 1992's Our Time in Eden. By then, though, Merchant had made her announcement, and an MTV Unplugged album capped the band's career - or at least its Merchant phase. The Maniacs regrouped with Mary Ramsey, who had played viola on Our Time in Eden, on vocals. The new lineup even scored a hit with a remake of Roxy Music's More Than This.
Merchant isn't upset that the band carried on without her, although she was surprised. "People were talking about starting a radio station and moving to different cities," she says. "I didn't expect them to go on. But when they did, I thought it was fine. It's a great life. There's no reason to deny it to somebody else."
While her lyrics remain as earnest and compassionate as ever, with songs on the new album about the poor, racism, and women's roles in society, the music on Ophelia is dominated by sumptuous arrangements, slow tempos, and stately melodies - it's the audio equivalent of aromatherapy. With the possible exception of the relatively upbeat first single, Kind & Generous, which runneth over with gratitude and hooks, the songs aren't about to knock Britney Spears off the pop charts.
So it may come as a relief to long-time fans that Merchant still sprinkles a few of the poppier 10,000 Maniacs songs throughout her live set, including These Are Days and What's the Matter Here. "I think the versions we do of the songs now give them new life. That's why I enjoy doing them. And the audience loves hearing them," says Merchant, who performs these days with a six-piece band that includes drummer (and her boyfriend) Peter Yanowitz and former Joe Jackson bassist Graham Maby.
Also in the band's repertoire are some surprising covers. Merchant and the Maniacs were always generous with their versions of other people's songs, and were playing Iris DeMent's amazing Let the Mystery Be when relatively few people had heard of the country singer. (The Maniacs also helped introduce the world to Tracy Chapman, who warmed up for them on some In My Tribe tour dates.) Merchant and her band have a number of covers at their disposal, including the Elvis Presley hit In the Ghetto (written by B. J. Thomas [note from @Natalie webmaster: actually written by Mac Davis]), the Nick Lowe-penned What's So Funny' Bout (Peace Love And Understanding), David Bowie's Space Oddity, and Jeff Buckley's Last Goodbye. "We do just about anything I like," says Merchant. "It could be If I Only Had a Brain from The Wizard of Oz or it could be a Cheap Trick song or a Katell Keineg song. That's what's so great about this band - they're all such good musicians, we can learn a song at sound check and do it that night, and it sounds like we've played it for months."
Despite the myriad roles she plays in the Ophelia film, Merchant won't be quitting her day job anytime soon. "I get scripts all the time, and I have for the last 15 years. But nothing has felt right to me. There's so much crap, basically. Sometimes the director is high-calibre but the scriptwriting is bad, or the scriptwriting is clever but it doesn't say anything. Then sometimes the director's young and there isn't any money, or I'll have to do some bizarre sex scene I don't want to do, or I have to shoot someone. It always comes down to 'This would be perfect except I have to sex with Bill Murray'."
When it's suggested that there are far worse roles out there, Merchant laughs, saying, "'Do you want to do it?"