By: Gary Graff

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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 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 Merchant. "I have that same feeling every spring -- 'I've survived another winter!' "

This is not the sentiment you expect from Natalie Merchant. During the 12 years of 10,000 Maniacs' existence, 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. 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.

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 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 "Saturday Night Live" performance, Merchant sported a tight shirt and bell-bottom pants.

The music has also changed. Our Time in Eden features some of Merchant's sunniest and most inward-looking lyrics; she still tackles the issues of the day, but for the first time 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 teen-ager after 11 or 12 years have passed. There's got to be a certain confidence that comes with growth and the passing of time."

For her part, 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 Merchant. "I just wanted to use it as a balm more, something that can heal."

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, 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 in Denver, she sat on the grass outside the venue for about a half-hour, talking with fans.

"I still really like our audience," 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 on stage; 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 teen-age Natalie Merchant could not have envisioned such problems. Growing up in Jamestown, 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; Drew says the musicians didn't know whether 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.

The group's breakthrough came with the 1987 album In My Tribe, though 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."

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.

Merchant took an apartment in Manhattan. 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."

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.

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," she says.

As the Maniacs cranked into active duty again, Merchant convinced 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 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."

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

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. Merchant is also a visual artist -- she has done much of the art work 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.

"I've never been one for planning, but I feel like I want to start planning. All I've ever done as an adult is be in 10,000 Maniacs; that's been my job. It's time to make some other goals for myself."