When did you first dance like that, Natalie?
"It's funny. When I was about 16 I used to sneak into clubs to see John's band; and I remember my mother sent my sister down to see me dance, and my sister went back and told my mother I must be on drugs!"
Born out of boredom in Jamestown, New York State and still permanently aware of the place, the Maniacs six have found - not surprisingly - a certain popularity growing in England and Europe which has led them, via their Secrets Of The I Ching album and crucial My Mother The War single, to a kinda stuff interview room at WEA, where they're "promoting" their new Can't Ignore The Train. Natalie (voice) and John (guitar).
An odd group?
Natalie: "We're different.."
John: "I think we're unusual..."
Natalie: "Because we're so normal! We have to fight to get into the clubs sometimes. I can go stand out in the crowd before we go on and no one takes any notice of me. And . . . I feel more comfortable sitting at home talking to my aunts and my grandmother than I do being in a cafe and talking to girls who - I don't know - people who are part of my contemporary culture. I just feel very normal ..."
The Maniacs are happy. Their inbred puritanism is strangely intriguing; I don't think they go out and get blasted too much. But for normal people, they make unnaturally good music. If anything, they're just beginning to forge a truly unique style leaving behind the obvious influences, namely reggae, and turn-of-the-decade English (Gang of Four, Joy Division ... ) while instilling their love for folk into a vibrant pop sway whose individuality has as much to do with Robert Buck's utterly original, tingling, spiralling lead work as with their increasingly dynamic rhythm and Natalie's waterfall words/voice.
"I love the pure sound of vowels and consonants and sometimes I've written lyrics that maybe didn't make as much clear sense as they could've, just because I preferred different words in that order ..."
Which explains the intoxicating mystery of Katrina's Fair, or the tape boy in the studio who pesters Natalie about Back O' The Moon. But other parts ring clearer...Can't Ignore The Train is at once expansionly cinematic in its imagery and wistfully convincing in its emotion. A dream-desire to go that never makes it. I understood. The clarity carries on to the forthcoming album.
Though there is a vital balance: the romance of the fleeting image being just as valuable as the recognition of a message. A serious message? Depressing subjects?
Natalie: "Sometimes, because . . . well, I write lyrics about what I think about, and I can't really ignore a lot of the suffering that goes on in the world. But in the same way, I'm not miserable about it... I'm sure I could use my performance as a vehicle for my miserability (laughs) but I'd rather make people happy for that moment that they're there.
"There are so many voiceless, suffering people. There's a song on the new album that - to say it's an elegy to the American Indian might sound trite - but it seems like it was a race of people that were just destroyed."
John: "And it's a genocide that nobody speaks of..."
They tell me about the Indian Removal Acts of the 19th century; contrast it with what they heard in school. What was the first World War?
Natalie (parrot-fashion): "The-war-to-end-all-wars . . . "
10,000 Maniacs have a keen, if understated, sense of the absurd.
John: "Since Natalie has a vehicle now, and people are actually listening to her words, it just seems so pointless to stand up there and sing, 'Like a virgin, touched for the very first time'. Or, like, Prince . . . "
Their label mate adorns the opposite wall.
Natalie (collapsing in fits): "Look at him, there he is! He's ridiculous!!"
John: "And all he's singing about is ... getting laid. Is that all there is to life? Everybody gets laid, Prince, you're not the only one. And particularly, you'd be in trouble if you were a multi-millionaire and you weren't getting laid..."
It's unlikely that the paths of 10,000 Maniacs and Prince will ever cross. The former have the purer vision.