by: Steve Malins (page 29)

Natalie Merchant, lead singer with 10,000 Maniacs, is a contradictory individual. A dervish-like figure on stage, despite the swishing Victorian dresses and her small-boned frame, she's inquisitive and challenging in conversation and yet has retained curiously child-like convictions into adulthood, such as a fear that she "would automatically kill" grass if she walked on it.

Staring through strands of thick, black hair that fall across her face, she asks "Do my eyes look puffy?" in a voice barely above a whisper. Rowdy hotel guests prevented the light-sleeping singer from enjoying more than a couple of hours sleep the previous night, and she feels disconnected and faint. Passing over a mug of thick, freshly brewed coffee in favour of mineral water, she explains that her croaky voice is the result of the 10,000 Maniacs gig at London's Orange Club, promoting their new album, Our Time In Eden. "It was too small, too smoky I felt like I'd battled for years to avoid playing somewhere like that," the 28-year-old singer complains, with obvious distaste. "I like a clean environment. I'm allergic to cigarette smoke. I kept reminding myself that we'd just played Carnegie Hall. You should have seen the dressing room..."

Years of constant gigging and her vigorous attacks on child abuse, adult illiteracy and the Gulf War on the band's recordings suggest that she is anything but a delicate wallflower. Yet the self-confessed former "social retard" who used to reply to her family's suggestions that she work at the local supermarket with the declaration "but mother, I'm an artist," retains some of her old frailty. "I got sick after touring with the In My Tribe album in the late '80s. The doctors were saying it could be death if we carried on touring, because I'd contracted spinal meningitis," she explains. "It was meningitis on top of months of chronic bronchitis and chronic anaemia. That was when I wanted to take a break. But we didn't. As soon as I recovered, we were back on the road and making another record again. After the last album, Blind Man's Zoo, I said 'I can't do it anymore,' took a year off and tried to take more control."

Merchant indulged herself by visiting art exhibitions and she enjoyed a year-long move from New York to the rural roots of her birthplace, Jamestown in upstate New York. "Sometimes I just sat down and listened to the sounds of the forest," she mumbles in a distracted monotone, as if to emphasize the kooky image that has made her an object of desire. "Men shout at me 'Will you marry me?' when I'm on stage," she says. "At least that's better than 'Take them off, baby'."

Natalie's decision to pen the new album in her hometown reflects its inward-looking approach and lush atmosphere. She deliberately set the project apart from the aggressive, adrenaline-fueled highs of rap and grunge rock. "The kind of music popular in America at the moment is aggressive, almost vulgar. This 'fuck everything' attitude that pervades is really dangerous," she says. "I think there are a lot of music fans who aren't in that state of mind and that music isn't speaking to them."

As the album title suggests, idyllic and spiritual moods dominate but Natalie is aware of the claustrophobic realities and smalltown eccentricities that make up everyday life in Jamestown. "It's just like Twin Peaks," she laughs, describing local characters such as the fat man who drinks sixpacks of Pepsi and plays bingo all day. Her teenage experiences in Jamestown illustrate her own foibles and highly-strung personality. Apart from working in a "hippy bakery" and living in fear of the lie-detector test required for a job at her local Super Duper supermarket because she had "shoplifted as a kid," Natalie's shyness was a constant problem. "I needed to travel and have adventures. I couldn't really speak to people, I had nothing to say and I was easily intimidated."

She was determined to avoid the fate of her schoolfriends, many of whom were pregnant and married by their late teens. "My mother married when she was 19 and had four children in quick succession. She always told me, 'don't bother with marriage and children,'" she remembers. "It's completely acceptable for 15-year-old girls to have babies where I come from. My brother is 18 years old and his girlfriend is pregnant. They're totally ill-equipped for life. I mean, I'm 28 and I'm not ready yet."

She does, however, have a strong bond with the children at a Harlem shelter for the homeless, where she often works as a volunteer. "I tie their shoes and wipe their butts," she says, quick to undermine her image as a squeamish romantic.

Natalie's involvement with the homeless centre came about through her friendship with Michael Stipe, who asked her to make a public service announcement on the project for his film company C-00 (the pair have also recently recorded a song together for an abortion pro-choice organisation). She visibly jumps as REM's recent single, Drive floats around the room from hidden speakers in the WEA office, just when Stipe's name is mentioned. "Where is he coming from?" she says, puzzled and starting to laugh. "He's always trailing me on my shoulder. He's my little angel... and little devil," she grins, although she remains coy about the details of their relationship.