By: Robert Hilburn (Los Angeles Times Service)
NOTE: This article was about 10,000 Maniacs & another band. Included here are just the parts of the article that dealt with the Maniacs.
The Men They Couldn't Hand and 10,000 Maniacs. Those may sound like a Halloween double bill or maybe the lineup for a punk show.
They are, in fact, the names of exciting new rock bands that have come up with two of the year's most appealing - and, despite the names, relatively mainstream - albums.
Instead of the punk or zany overtones suggested by its name, 10,000 Maniacs is a six-member band from western New York state that mixes the bright, highly emotional instrumental sweep of R.E.M. with the vocals of a singer who sounds as though she served her apprenticeship in an English folk group. The trademarks of the band's new Elektra album, The Wishing Chair, are eloquence and a winsome, seductive grace.
Natalie Merchant, the 21-year-old lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs sighs good-naturedly on the phone when two issues are raised. Yes, she indicated, she often has been asked about the seeming inappropriateness of the band's name and about the fact that she seems to have an English accent.
"Well you've got to remember ... we weren't all that eloquent - as you put it - when we began in 1981," she said. "We had no acoustic instruments then. We were completely electric and doing songs by bands like the Gang of Four and Joy Division.
"Even then, however, the name wasn't entirely fitting. We used it mostly to sensationalize ourselves - to get people to come see us. When people did see us, they began assuming that we called ourselves 10,000 Maniacs for the irony involved. At any rate, It was too late to change it."
About the English folk strains in her voice, Merchant added, "A lot of people do assume I'm from England because the people there seem to have a purer sound to their vowels, but it's just that I studied voice for a few years and I was taught to enunciate letters, especially vowels. I don't pinch my vowels the way most people do."
Much like R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe, Merchant is an "effects" singer in that she treats her voice as an instrument in the band rather than interpreting lyrics with the careful, aggressive phrasing of a Rickie Lee Jones or Chrissie Hynde.
Unlike Stipe, however, she generally pronounces the words instead of merely slurring them so that they come across chiefly as mood portraits. Even so, there is an abstractness to her writing that forces you to study the lyric sheet to piece together a song's meaning.
Again reminiscent of R.E.M., 10,000 Maniacs makes the elusiveness of its music seem richly enticing and warm rather than arty or pretentious. The key songs on the LP are stamped with both originality and heart, pushing the group to the forefront of the rich cadre of new US rock bands.
The group, which uses considerable folk coloring in its arrangements, touches on a wide range of themes in its album: small-town restlessness in Can't Ignore the Train, working-class reflections in Maddox Table, stormy confrontation in Scorpio Rising and political satire in My Mother the-War.
Merchant and her fellow band members - guitarists Robert Buck and John Lombardo, drummer Jerry Augustyniak, bassist Steve Gustafson and keyboardist Dennis Drew - were drawn together by the new wave and post-punk music played on the college radio station in Jamestown N.Y.
"Except for John, we were all deejays on the station, and that music was our only link with modern culture." Merchant said. "Most of the kids in town were just into the normal stuff you hear on the commercial radio, but this other music by bands like the Clash, the Gang of Four and the Cure seemed so exciting, even revolutionary to us. It's what made us want to be in our own band.
"The funny thing was most people in our area were so isolated from this new music that they assumed we wrote the song when we started doing cover versions of things like Guns of Brixton (by the Clash). And I was too shy to even speak into the microphone to tell people they weren't our songs."
After a year of playing around town, 10,000 Maniacs began playing out of town, eventually settling briefly in Atlanta where the group became friends with R.E.M., who are based in nearby Athens, GA. But the group's breakthrough was in England where its first album (Secrets of the I Ching) was well-received critically.
The band returned to England last spring to record The Wishing Chair with Joe Boyd, who also produced R.E.M.'s latest LP. The next step in the 10,000 Maniacs-R.E.M. connection occurs when the Maniacs open a series of Midwest concerts in November for R.E.M. The bands are likely to be teamed again at the year's end - on the Top 10 lists of numerous critics.