by: G. Brown

Natalie Merchant, the politically aware singer and primary songwriter of 10,000 Maniacs, has taken the lead role in the band - it's her face that graces videos and the covers of magazines.

The guys who wrap her lush voice in alluring folk-pop - the Four Stooges, they call themselves in jest - are cool about it.

"We resolved that early on - the lead singer is always the focus of a group," keyboardist Dennis Drew said prior to a recent concert in Salt Lake City. 10,000 Maniacs will perform at Red Rocks Amphitheatre tonight.

"My family appreciates it when people know there's five of us. But our kick is the music, really, and that's a collaboration."

The band, formed a decade ago in upstate New York, had occasional hits in the '80s (Like the Weather, Eat for Two), but 10,000 Maniacs won respect from many fans for tackling sticky social issues. Merchant's occasionally stern self-seriousness was a jarring complement to the gently melodic feel provided by Drew, guitarist Robert Buck, bassist Steven Gustafson and drummer Jerome Augustyniak.

After 1989's Blind Man's Zoo, the members took a break and attended to their private lives - except for Merchant, they still live in Jamestown, N.Y., when not touring. Drew got married, quit drinking and became a father last year.

"I got domesticated a little bit - I'm a real family man now," he admitted. "If you would have told me at 15 that someday I'd enjoy mowing the lawn, I wouldn't have believed you. Now I love it."

Merchant spent time formally studying the piano. When the band subsequently reconvened, Drew noted, "Natalie played all through the sessions, and it brought her deeper into the actual songs. She had more to do with the music, and still had everything to do with the lyrics. Instead of being a little folk-rock band with her words on top, it was a better mesh, more interaction."

The nearly platinum Our Time In Eden has re-established 10,000 Maniacs. Much of the album concerns the intricacies of personal relationships, but Merchant doesn't abandon uneasy topics, from child abuse to nuclear fallout to frontier women. The subtle, trancelike aura of the music is orderly and well-tempered.

The atypically optimistic These Are Days was performed at the MTV Inaugural Ball, and James Brown's horn section sits in on the radio-friendly Candy Everybody Wants (an observation of a generation anesthetized by all things vacuous or lurid) and Few and Far Between.

On Tuesday, 10,000 Maniacs will take the MTV Unplugged stage.