by: Steve Morse (section: Arts & Film page: 43)

Natalie Merchant is sitting in an Orlando hotel room, not far from Disney World. It's a warm day, which sounds appealing by frosty, late-autumn Boston standards. But Merchant jumps on the phone to say, "I'd rather be in Boston. At least I could go to a decent museum there!"

Bingo. You know you're not dealing with some sun-baked pop star whose brain cells died years ago. This is a woman who grew up in a forest in the cultural backwater of Jamestown, N.Y., but has since lived in London, Los Angeles and Manhattan, building a reputation as an intellectual with heart.

With her band 10,000 Maniacs, Merchant has penned some of the most articulate folk-pop songs of the past decade, about everything from child beating and atomic fallout, to history-conscious tunes about Gold Rush brides and the horrors of capital punishment -- topics that appear on their new album, Our Time in Eden.

"Some of these are very complicated issues to be addressing in a pop song," admits Merchant, whose group headlines the Gosman Center at Brandeis on Sunday night. (It's their first local show since the Earth Day concert at Foxboro Stadium two years ago.)

The decade-old band has had an occasional radio hit (Like the Weather and Eat for Two), but has won most of its respect for a series of gently melodic albums and a yen for tackling sticky social issues.

Asked about her social awareness, Merchant says, "Some people in the band think it's prevented us from becoming more popular, because the lyrics are too dense and controversial at times," says Merchant. "The song Eat for Two, which I wrote about teen-age pregnancy, was interpreted, especially in the South, as being a pro-choice song, so many radio stations wouldn't play it. And the video had very limited play on MTV because it was controversial at the time. I think those sort of moments sometimes frustrate people in the band.

"But I think part of the reason we've gained a lot of the respect and attention that we have, is due to the lyrics and their thoughtfulness," she says. "And the new album definitely isn't an abandonment of that type of lyric writing."

The song that jumps out is I'm Not the Man, a true story about a man unjustly accused of murder. "I think it has some of the most intense lyrics I've ever written," adds Merchant. "And the man was actually executed a day before I sang the song. It was in Virginia. So that's the dark side of the scale, though I think the rest of the album overall is optimistic because it discusses change and growth."

Part of the optimism stems from Merchant taking time off to return to Jamestown to visit family and friends -- and to rent a lakeside log cabin with no electricity and no plumbing. In short, to get away from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where she's been living in recent years.

"Seeing my friends and their children, and seeing how they've changed so much, definitely influenced the record. So much of the record seems to address the passage of time, change and growth. I even went back to my high school, which I haven't been back to in 10 years, to visit my teachers. That was very strange. It's hard for me to believe that they were still there. My best friends in school really were my teachers. So it was good to see them. But I was amazed now that I'm an adult to see all the things I've done since I left high school. Actually, it was longer than 10 years, it's been about 13 years. But the few teachers I was really close to had been following my career. The music teacher even said he arranged one of our songs for his choir. That was sweet."

The 10,000 Maniacs -- now including guitarist Robert Buck, bassist Steven Gustafson, keyboardist Dennis Drew and drummer Jerome Augustyniak -- were hatched in Jamestown, where, except for Merchant, they still live when not touring. But for Merchant, going back was like a pilgrimage. She felt burned out after the band's last record in 1989, and badly needed a break.

"We deliberately made the decision, after touring for almost a year, that we would take a year off and attend to our private lives, just take time away from performing and writing to find renewed enthusiasm," says Merchant. So she visited family and friends, but also spent time formally studying the piano; she had previously just been self-taught.

"I've always wanted to be able to read music so I'd be able to play other people's music and learn what I can from the way they write," she says. "I had a lot of time to rehearse because I was self-employed. I'd spent nine hours sitting at the piano just trying to get one little Mozart piece. It would be just one page of music, but would take me nine hours to be able to play it. But it was very satisfying when I finished.

"I'd like to study so much more in life. I'd like to take more dance classes. And I have an intense desire to speak Italian. I've tried to tutor myself with tapes and books. I think I really just need to live in Italy and force myself to speak it.

"I think when people stagnate and decide not to learn anymore, that's when they start dying. I think it's so exciting, for instance, to see senior citizens taking university courses and going on trips and traveling around the world. That keeps them alive."

When Merchant and the rest of 10,000 Maniacs (the name comes from an old movie) reconvened, she was ready to go. "I think the new record is our best record," she notes. "We didn't have any fear in our writing this time. We treated rehearsal like a workshop. We didn't assume that every note that was played in that rehearsal would be recorded on the album. And that was very liberating. It left us open to experiment more.

"Some days we'd just have Jerry (the drummer) experiment with different rhythms and we'd play the same chord progression to five different rhythms and that would be all that we would do that day," she adds. "Other days, I had a stack of flash cards of key signatures and we would just at random pick a key signature and play in that key for the day.