by: Tina Maples

To keep your brains from turning to cranberry Jell-O over this holiday weekend, here's a little quiz for all of you pop fans.

See if you can match the ancient, un-hip song references below with the situations that apply to the way-cool, folk-pop band 10,000 Maniacs, which performs Tuesday at the Riverside Theatre.

Question: What line from Tony Orlando's Tie a Yellow Ribbon best applies to the last time the Maniacs released an album?

Answer: "It's been three long years/Do you still want me?"

Question: What Barry Manilow song were the burned-out band members singing after the Maniacs' last tour, 1989's Blind Man's Zoo?

Answer: Tryin' to Get the Feelin' Again.

For the Maniacs, the current tour provided the best of all possible answers. Yes, the fans still want 'em, and yes, the band did get the feelin' again, with a lush new album of intelligent, dreamy pop. Yet in spite of the disc's title, the time before Our Time in Eden wasn't exactly paradise.

The 11-year-old quintet from Jamestown, N.Y., had been touring like... well, like Maniacs since its 1985 Elektra debut, The Wishing Chair. Thus, it was no surprise to any of the musicians that, during the last leg of the tour for Blind Man's Zoo, the Maniacs found themselves suffering from a severe case of road fatigue.

"We'd been on the same treadmill although it was a very successful treadmill of tour, write, record, rehearse, tour, for eight years," said keyboardist Dennis Drew, 35, filling in for flu-ridden lead singer Natalie Merchant in a recent telephone interview.

"We really needed a chance to investigate our own lives and our own selves. We'd been public figures and moving targets for a long time."

The band agreed on a performing hiatus. Except for a month long mini-tour in 1990 to promote Hope Chest, a reissue of two early, out-of-print albums, the Maniacs kept their show off the road.

The members threw themselves into a frenzy of personal pursuits. Drummer Jerome (Jerry) Augustyniak got married; Drew one-upped him by tying the knot and having the band's first baby, Emily, born last March.

Merchant, 28, whose entire young adulthood since age 17 had been consumed by the band, used the time to broaden her horizons, traveling in Europe and South Africa, going to non-rock concerts and working in a homeless shelter and a day-care center.

Meanwhile, the possibility of a permanent breakup silently hovered in the background.

"I wasn't terribly worried about it, but that possibility's always there," Drew said. "We don't have any commitment to each other or anybody else to ever make another record or do another tour.... We don't make any plans for the future. Ever."

To the good fortune of its fans, the band members also guitarist Rob Buck and bassist Steve Gustafson came off their hiatus refreshed and refocused. They also were determined to make some changes.

First up was their approach to songwriting. On past albums, the band completed the songs first, with Merchant adding the lyrics last. On Eden, Merchant played more piano, while the band members collaborated in a "workshop" approach to songwriting.

Drew contributed the record's forthcoming second single, Candy Everybody Wants, a melodic hummer with deceptively biting lyrics about the mediocrity of television ("our little happy song," he joked).

New Producer

The Maniacs also brought in producer Paul Fox in place of Peter Asher, who produced the band's 1987 crossover album, In My Tribe. Drew said they'd admired Fox's work on Robyn Hitchcock's album, as well as XTC's Oranges and Lemons and the recent self-titled debut by the Maniacs' opening act, the Wallflowers, an L.A. quintet fronted by Jakob Dylan (Bob's son).

"We knew Paul could go from the highly processed XTC to the very natural, completely live-sounding Wallflowers stuff," Drew said. "So we felt confident that he was versatile enough to help us get what we wanted. And it worked out that way."

On stage, that translates to bigger production. The Maniacs are touring with a violist and a three-man horn section to recreate the sound of the album's James Brown Horns. Pianist and acoustic guitarist Amanda Kramer will fill in Merchant's keyboard parts, leaving the singer free to pursue her trademark twirl-dancing.

Though linked to previous efforts by Merchant's subdued, evocative vocals, the music on Eden is unabashedly prettier, the themes less strident than those of Blind Man's Zoo, which featured songs about poverty, racism and war.

"As a songwriter, Natalie's just continued to get more concise and focused in her writing," Drew said. "In her early days, she really had a lot more words than she needed. She's becoming, I think, a little bit more natural and a little bit more human.

"For a while her lyrics were real third-person things, issues and subjects from the morning newspaper. She did it very well, but it's great now to see her write songs that people can relate to a little more personally, like Jezebel, These Are Days and How You've Grown."