by: Gary Graff (Knight-Ridder News Service)

Natalie Merchant is talking about These Are Days, the cheery MTV hit by her band 10,000 Maniacs.

For a singer whose bailiwick is writing pointed lyrics about political and social concerns, its warm and friendly tone is something of a departure. And Ms. Merchant knows it.

"I was trying to put into words what it felt like to spend a long, cold winter in New England and have spring come and lilacs bloom and be riding my bicycle through the countryside," says Ms. Merchant, who is touring with her band. "I have that same feeling every spring 'I've survived another winter!' "

Then Ms. Merchant drops a bombshell.

"I've talked to many women about this it's definitely the time of year for being aware of a lot of our maternal urges. Every spring, all the women I know suddenly want to be pregnant. We think of the possibilities of continuing life and having children."

A pause, and Ms. Merchant chuckles. "Usually that goes away by June, thank God. But April and May are definitely my 'I want a child, I want to be pregnant' months."

Unexpected views

This is not the sentiment you expect from Ms. Merchant. During the 12 years of 10,000 Maniacs' existence, Ms. Merchant has seemed frozen in that initial impression of the earnest singer-songwriter. Her look was collegiate bohemian prudish dresses, cloth slippers, no makeup and long, straight hair. Ms. Merchant was undeniably intelligent and creative, but she also seemed sexless and humorless. Hers was a stone-faced demeanor, and she thought nothing of admonishing a concert crowd she found too loud or dumping a boyfriend who didn't conform to her no-meat and no-alcohol mores.

Ms. Merchant who likes to remind people that "I joined the band at 17, so I kind of grew up in public" hadn't grown out of the furrowed-brow pose and always seemed more interested in the weight of the world than personal things such as having a child. That's changed. As the Maniacs released their fifth album, Our Time in Eden, last fall, a new Ms. Merchant emerged. Her hair was styled into a neat bob. She sported natty new clothes by Christian Francis Roth a hot designer and Maniacs fan whose works retail for up to $3,000. For a recently repeated Saturday Night Live performance, Ms. Merchant sported a tight shirt and bell-bottom pants number in bright orange and black.

The music has also changed. Our Time in Eden features some of Ms. Merchant's sunniest and most inward-looking lyrics; she still tackles the issues of the day, but for the first time Ms. Merchant lets on that she may be having some fun amidst the turmoil.

"I think it's a natural thing, an evolution," says David Bither, a vice president at Elektra Records, the Maniacs' record label. "Nobody stays where they are as a teenager after 11 or 12 years have passed. There's got to be a certain confidence that comes with growth and the passing of time."

Healing impulse

For her part, Ms. Merchant says that none of the changes everyone else seems to find dramatic were premeditated.

"I just realized that our music has sort of dwelled on the really sad and hopeless aspects of the human experience," says Ms. Merchant. "I just wanted to use it as a balm more, something that can heal. I want it to be uplifting, but not glib; to me the music is not thoroughly optimistic, but it is more spiritual, I guess."

She pauses again. "Oh, God. I don't want to start sounding like Sting. That's my greatest terror now when I do interviews, that I'll sound almost maniacally self-absorbed or something." If anything, Ms. Merchant has battled diligently against becoming a pop star. Offstage she still dresses down, and she still tries to maintain personal contact with her audience. Before a recent performance at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre near Denver, she sat on the grass outside the venue for about a half-hour, talking with fans and reading out loud from a humor book called The Dictionary of Thoughts.

"I still really like our audience," Ms. Merchant says. "I've known artists who say they get to a point where they don't identify with their audiences anymore, but I haven't had that experience. I get handed a lot of little notes when I'm onstage; I'm getting a lot of invitations to high school graduations on this tour, which is really sweet.

"I would be sad if the day comes when I can't do the little visits and things like that, though I think it's coming."

The teenage Natalie Merchant could not have envisioned such problems. Growing up in Jamestown in upstate New York, she played tennis, swam and edited her high school yearbook. When she was 16, she tested out of high school and into Jamestown Community College, where she met keyboardist Dennis Drew and Maniacs bassist Steven Gustafson.

It was a loose arrangement at first; Mr. Drew says the musicians didn't know whether Ms. Merchant would show up from gig to gig. But she stuck around, and 10,000 Maniacs - the band name was a twist on an old horror movie called Two Thousand Maniacs - began releasing records in 1983. [webmaster's note: actually, the band's first release was in 1982]

The group's breakthrough came with the 1987 album In My Tribe, though Ms. Merchant had trouble with the move to bigger halls and larger crowds. Often she was criticized for her wooden, distant performances and for lecturing fans on proper decorum. "I think maybe some of that was the material we had to deal with," she says. "I wanted to be very faithful to the lyrics. I felt that my gestures should interpret the lyrics. Now that we're doing different material, I can be more open. I feel more comfortable being I don't know maybe friendlier."

Beneficial break

Some of this change is the result of a break the band took in 1990, after touring to support the album Blind Man's Zoo. The musicians scattered; some of the guys married and had children. Ms. Merchant split her time between an apartment in Manhattan and a house in upstate New York. She loved the big city's cultural opportunities, but it brought her face to face with the world she'd been singing about.

"I was exposed to a great amount of sorrow and misery and poverty and violence and aggression," she says. "I had never lived anywhere where this was being dealt with on a daily basis. I never had to step over a homeless person to get into the grocery store when I was in Jamestown." Ms. Merchant was moved to act. While she was filming a public service announcement for a company owned by her friend R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, she encountered a shelter for homeless families in Harlem. After finishing the spot, she decided to stay on as a volunteer.

"I thought, 'I'm not doing anything that important right now. This would be good for me,' " she says. So she began reporting to the shelter a few days a week, playing games and coming up with activities for 16 preschoolers as well as walking them to a public school for a free lunch.

Ms. Merchant learned much about the bureaucracy of poverty and the nature of the working poor. "When donations of clothing and whatever else would come into the shelter, the women who worked for the shelter needed them as equally as the residents," Ms. Merchant says.

"I never felt smug. I always felt a real sense of humility. And my main pleasure was that I had a relationship with these kids."

As the Maniacs cranked into active duty again, Ms. Merchant persuaded her bandmates to play a benefit for the shelter, raising $25,000 to build a playground.

It turned out the break from making music was good for the entire Maniacs lineup. "We hadn't had a month off, much less nine months off," says Mr. Drew, 34. "It allowed everybody to relax, grow up a little bit. We got to have lives."

"And when we came back, we found that we were in the band because we wanted to be, not because it was some great train rolling along so fast that you couldn't get off. After nine or 10 straight years, there wasn't much conversation left. Now we talk more - just about news, about our friends, our kids."

Spirited sessions

The recording sessions for Our Time in Eden were spirited, according to Ms. Merchant. This time she wrote her lyrics in the studio, while the band was playing, rather than holing herself away from the other musicians. It provided an energy and levity that had been lacking from the Maniacs' work. And fans noticed, too; the album is a million-seller, there's been a second MTV hit (the playful satire Candy Everybody Wants) and a new generation of teenage fans joining the already fervent cult the Maniacs attracted during the '80s.

The reverie ends after the Maniacs' current tour, however. The group is looking towards another break. Mr. Drew and Mr. Gustafson recently purchased a radio station in Jamestown, so they'll concentrate on operating that.

Ms. Merchant, meanwhile, has a full spate of opportunities travel, music lessons, perhaps some classes. A friend who owns a puppet theater has asked her to write music and design puppets for a new show. A composer has talked to her about writing a libretto for an opera. Ms. Merchant is also a visual artist - she's done much of the artwork for the Maniacs' records - and she'd like to pursue that interest.

"I'll be 30 at the end of this tour," she says. "It's a pivotal time for me. I feel like I want to assess how I've lived my life in the past 30 years and what I would do for the rest of my life.