by: Robin Vaughan
10,000 Maniacs' new sound accentuates the positive
Is there life after Natalie Merchant for 10,000 Maniacs?
The band's founding members, now joined by singer Mary Ramsey, have found a viable market for their gentle, folk-inflected pop even without the identifiable vocal mannerisms of their syrup-throated former lead singer.
The friendly, countryish cover version of Roxy Music's More Than This, the first single from the new band's Geffen debut, Love Among the Ruins, has maintained respectable chart position since its release in June, peaking at No. 26. And old 10,000 Maniacs fans have faithfully cheered the band on at live shows all summer. They get another chance today, when 10,000 performs at Mixfest at City Hall Plaza.
"We're finding that the old fans still make up the biggest part of our audience," said guitarist and lyricist John Lombardo, a founding Maniac who left the band to pursue other musical interests, including a folk duo with Ramsey called John and Mary, which put out two CDs on Rykodisc. He returned to the fold with the new singer in 1995.
"The people who were critical of us before are still critical of us now," he added. "Basically, not that much has changed. It sounds pretentious to say it, but it's true that the main common denominator in our audience is well-educated people. We have a huge following of middle-aged people who grew up listening to so-called important music, as well as a lot of college students and young adults."
The people responding to the Maniacs' sound, said Lombardo, aren't interested in being subjected to bleak, noisy tirades or rowdy concert scenes, and the music - an ultra-soft brand of top-40 balladry - will never inspire them to start bopping each other over the head with their Evian bottles.
"We've never had a fight, let alone a brawl (at live shows)," said Lombardo. "This album is really about perseverance. It's very romantic and decidedly optimistic. People may be tired of all that darkness - I mean, how much further can we be dragged down to the depths?"
"I think this album is really more about hope than anything else," agreed Ramsey, a lifelong musician who began studying violin at age 5 and put herself through school by playing with the Erie Philharmonic Orchestra. Ramsey, who adds tasteful, delicate viola parts to the new Maniacs arrangements ("I fell in love with that instrument when I was 16," she said), describes a band sensibility that reflects the positive nature of the music. The band's teamwork writing style, she said, is a "full collaboration - beyond full," and recording with her new band has been "almost effortless."
She and her partners maintain friendly relations with Merchant, who has been supportive and sensitive to Ramsey's unique predicament in replacing her.
"I just got a letter from Natalie a while ago, and she was talking about that weird mix of praise and criticism that she had always had to deal with," Ramsey said.
Inheriting the public's love/hate relationship with Merchant, said Ramsey, makes for a "complicated scenario. It's kind of like being the second wife."
Ramsey's voice, which is so light and feminine that it makes Merchant's seem nearly menacing by comparison, in no way reproduces the old Maniacs sound, but live audiences have been getting excited over the old material the band continues to play, nonetheless.
"I see their fists in the air and lighters going up, like they're at an Aerosmith show or something," she said, "so I guess they like it."