by: Tom Moon (page 1F)

A critic couldn't have said it better.

Reflecting on some of her band's earlier albums, Natalie Merchant, the lead voice of 10,000 Maniacs, says that while the songs still resonate, she finds the production a bit stuffy at times, not at all the way the band sounds live.

"It's that fussy, obsessive nature of ours," she said with a smile, drinking in the early-fall afternoon sunlight in an outdoor pagoda behind the Korman Suites Hotel. In town for a recent benefit performance at the Mann Music Center, Merchant joked about the perception of the Maniacs as a ponderous brood.

"It's true. We as a band think about everything. We think things to death." She offers an example: In keeping with the band's democratic approach, she drew up a ballot for the title of the new album, which arrives in stores today; there were 110 entries. "That level of examination can make the music sound stale and overworked."

This is quite a confession, given that Maniacs' meticulously crafted records have sold millions of copies and have cultivated a healthy market for thinking-people's music in an otherwise brain-dead pop environment. But the band doesn't necessarily want to maintain what it considers a stifling niche: In a year dominated by wholesale image overhaul (the metamorphosis of U2), the Maniacs chose to follow Blind Man's Zoo, its issues-oriented multi-platinum 1989 effort, with a subtle substance overhaul.

Something less literal. Something that was the product of harsh self-criticism. Our Time in Eden (Elektra) is the work of a more assured, evocative band.

It's not the same old preachy-whiny-precious 10,000 Maniacs. It's a hair short of brilliant.

The transformation is audible from the first note. Rather than opening with a bubbly, radio-friendly single, as the band has on each of four previous albums, Our Time opens with a slow, elegaic number called Noah's Dove that sets a specific mood. Merchant pushed for it as the first track, she says, because it was a clear indication that the band had broken with its past. "I felt this was a declaration, like, 'OK folks, get ready for a big shift.'"

This departure came about slowly, in the year of preproduction that led to the recording. Merchant and the other Maniacs - guitarist Rob Buck, keyboardist Dennis Drew, bassist Steve Gustafson, drummer Jerome Augustyniak - got together to listen to favorite records, trying to figure out why they liked what they liked. This led her to a major realization: A devotee of medieval music and black gospel, she discovered she'd been taking a dim view of pop music.

"I had held the belief that pop wasn't pure, somehow," Merchant says. "This was a big admission... because I had been condescending. But some of my most transcendent moments came from... pop records. I realized that what I was experiencing listening to the first Roxy Music record was the same as Mahler.... I became excited after I discovered that - I suddenly wasn't afraid of making (the music) sentimental."

After a period of rehearsal, the band played live in the studio, and eventually recorded most rhythm-section tracks that way - another departure from the instrument-by-instrument layering process of earlier works. Merchant, the chief lyricist and songwriter, tried writing in keys she hadn't used before, and found herself reacting to the music rather than dictating a theme.

"In the past there would be a topic that I was consumed with at the moment.... And I knew I would discuss it in the song, to the point where I would almost victimize the song. This time, I just wanted to write beautiful words that would accompany beautiful music. Every single lyric was inspired by the music."

Merchant's lyrics still include looming biblical references. The rhetoric of social responsibility from previous albums' extended narratives is eclipsed by scattershot images of more personal despair. There are moments of uncharacteristic giddiness, and there are some typical pointed jabs: The bright, cynical Candy Everybody Wants makes fun of TV with lines such as "so their minds are soft and lazy, well hey, give 'em what they want."

But even the occasional strong-headed lyrics don't disrupt the overall flow of this album, which is informed by soul and African music.

There are songs that examine clinical depression and emotional distress, but are never obsessed about those things, as Merchant is using a single situation to illuminate a more universal point. Tolerance chronicles and laments the bury-your-head attitude toward uncomfortable ideas that Merchant feels is prevailing now. "The sound you're hearing," she sings ruefully, with an official-sounding detachment, "the sound you're fearing is the hate that parades up and down our streets."

In spite of such dire moments, Merchant says, she believes Our Time in Eden is more upbeat than Blind Man's Zoo. It's certainly more colorful: Supplementing the band's own array of instruments are the James Brown horns, a string quartet and a bassoon duo. Even the more rustic tracks have buoyance, whether from Merchant's newfound soul swoops, enlivened rhythm section play, drastic dynamic contrasts, or points of pounding tension that evaporate into airy, light releases.

Merchant explains that the songs led the band to these elements.