The former lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs leaves upbeat songs off her new live album in the hopes you'll listen 'over and over'
by: Tim Powis
Natalie Merchant is talking from Los Angeles, during a break in the rehearsal for an appearance on The Tonight Show. The subject of discussion is her new CD, Live in Concert, due out Nov. 9.
"I wouldn't say it's a party album," she calmly concedes.
Not that you'd expect stadium-stomping rowdiness from a sensitive singer-songwriter such as Merchant, who plays Convocation Hall on Oct. 23.
Still, most live rock recordings have an aura of celebration, some sense that at least a few fists and flaming cigarette lighters were waving as one in the air. On Merchant's album -- comprised of half a dozen songs from the two best-selling studio albums she's released since leaving the band 10,000 Maniacs in 1993, a couple of numbers from the Maniacs days, and covers of David Bowie's Space Oddity, Neil Young's After the Gold Rush and The Gulf of Araby by the Ireland-based singer (and Merchant's friend), Katell Keineg -- the prevailing mood seems to be melancholy, or something in that neighborhood.
"It's a moodier live album," she grants. "But it's forceful. It's very graceful, it's very powerful. There were a lot of moments in the set that were more upbeat, but there were reasons why I didn't choose them. They didn't have the staying power. A 10-minute, highlife-tinged version of [the 10,000 Maniacs song] These Are Days with a huge percussion jam - I thought: 'Aw, how many times do you want to listen to that?' I still want an album that people actually would want to listen to over and over."
From her own standpoint, she succeeded. In fact, Merchant says that she prefers the Live in Concert versions of the five songs from her 1995 solo debut, Tigerlily, to their studio renditions. "The songs have a new life now," she says. "I really like the fuller band sound, the slightly more aggressive tempos. It's more danceable, more sensuous, more musical. Tigerlily was such a stripped-down album, zero production."
At the time, zero production was what she wanted. No producer is credited on Tigerlily or on her second studio album, last year's lusher-sounding Ophelia. That is almost unheard of nowadays, and it was quite deliberate. Merchant has a capricious, hippie-ish side: given half a chance, she veers off on digressions about a brand of biodegradable soap made by an eccentric rabbi; Noam Chomsky's open online letter decrying the folly of the Kosovo war; or how, as a college-radio DJ circa 1980, she would play the same Joy Division song on the air, over and over, for half an hour (no wonder she has a melancholy streak).
But she's a headstrong, independent hippie, not a docile flower child.
"I've been through a rebellious period for two records now, very anti-producer," she says. "What the hell does a producer do, other than sit and read the newspaper while you make your record? Which isn't true of all producers, but I get irritated with the idea that I would write an entire album, rehearse the musicians for months, then go into the studio and this total stranger would come in and say, 'Well, the verse is actually the chorus and you should really cut two minutes off. And what about those lyrics?' I felt like I just want one period of time where I call all the shots."
Now that she's capped that period with a live album, her anti-producer phase may be over. She can, for instance, conceive of working with the renowned Canadian studio auteur Daniel Lanois, who played guitar on a track on Ophelia. First things first, though.
"I have to start writing again," says Merchant, who splits her downtime between homes in New York City and Woodstock, N.Y.
"I'm starting as soon as I finish this little tour. Take six months and go live in the South Pacific and just write. That's my plan."