by: Robert J. Hawkins
For months, the 10,000 Maniacs rehearsed in an isolated cabin in Upstate New York before entering a London studio to record The Wishing Chair, their Elektra/Asylum Records debut.
The band called the cabin the "Big Stink."
"I never called it that. I called it the Cottage," says lyricist and lead singer Natalie Merchant.
Cabin or cottage -- Merchant has this gift for seeing life though a unique set of filters. A rose is a rose to Gertrude Stein; to Merchant a rose would offer layers of meaning, symbols, feelings, memories -- all of which she can convey in sparse lyrics that challenge you to share that vision. Her unusual phrasing -- what language is that? -- is an acquired taste. It's a daunting challenge, but worth accepting.
The 10,000 Maniacs don't carry a signature sound or a quick and sticky refrain that would make them overnight sensations. Already it has been nearly a five-year struggle for recognition.
But for those in search of signs of intelligent life in the world of popular music, they are the future.
The music is eclectic -- some blues, some jazz, some of the endless variations of rock -- and its influences have been R.E.M. and Fairport Convention. Nothing in the music suggests a band named 10,000 Maniacs.
"We've all along considered changing the name, but the momentum has kept it alive," said the group's main songwriter and lead guitarist, John Lombardo.
Merchant describes the band's creative process as a "six-way marriage" involving "four different composers and two creative players."
College radio audiences know 10,000 Maniacs best for My Mother the War an independent release reprised on The Wishing Chair album.
Most of Merchant's lyrics are drawn from the journals she has kept since she was a teen-ager -- the musings, dreams, observations of a shy, small-town girl. The book Hiroshima Diary inspired the vivid, haunting lyrics of Grey Victory that graphically describe the effects of the Enola Gay's "casual delivery" that ushered in the nuclear era. Back o'the Moon is her entreaty to a little girl named Jenny to not abandon childhood and its imaginative terrain too easily. Can't Ignore the Train perhaps best captures the small-town claustrophobia of a person with ambitions. And in Maddox Table Merchant sings of the exploitation of immigrant workers ("in a foreman's torrent/my first English was/faster boys if you want your pay") -- a song written at the behest of her mother, she said.
(Since you asked, Natalie, those are my favorites.)
The 10,000 Maniacs are on the Southwest leg of a grueling 30-date/38-day tour that puts them in San Diego's Spirit nightclub tomorrow night.