Mediocre Live: 10,000 Maniacs Fails To Sell Me With MTV Unplugged.

The Good: Some lyrics, Decent production (to make songs different from the album versions)
The Bad: Moments of voice, Live conceits
The Basics: It might have been incredibly successful at the time, but 10,000 Maniacs MTV Unplugged is an utterly unmemorable live album.


As I finish my Artist Of The Month exploration of the works of Natalie Merchant, I end where I began, with an album of Natalie Merchant from when she was a part of the band 10,000 Maniacs. Ironically, given how popular it was in my teen years, I had never actually heard the 10,000 Maniacs MTV Unplugged album before now. Now, after a solid eight listens, my verdict is simple: I’m not missing anything by not adding this to my permanent collection. In fact, listening to the MTV Unplugged, I am not entirely convinced that I even like the 10,000 Maniacs.

The 10,000 Maniacs MTV Unplugged album suffers from being largely indistinct. When one is not focusing on actually listening to the actual songs, this album completely blends into the background of one’s day as an auditory mush. This is very much an indistinct listening experience with songs blending together in an unmemorable, homogenous way. Songs bleed together with Natalie Merchant’s narcoleptic performance of 10,000 Maniacs sounds backed by guitars, violins, and very subtle percussion.

With fourteen tracks clocking out at 61:14, 10,000 Maniacs’ MTV Unplugged is essentially a soundtrack to the live event MTV sponsored with the band in the early 1990s. The live album showcases the talents of 10,000 Maniacs from when Natalie Merchant was integral to the band. The album is an obvious precursor to Merchant’s solo career as all but one song – the Bruce Springsteen cover “Because The Night,” which was one of the big singles off the album – are at least co-written by Natalie Merchant. She provides all of the lead vocals on the album and some of the pianowork. The rest of the instrumentals are provided by the rest of the band and a few guest musicians.

Instrumentally, MTV Unplugged is a mediocre pop-folk album. The 10,000 Maniacs on this album is presented as a quietly plodding along garage band that seems to exist solely to support the vocals of Natalie Merchant. Outside the haunting violins on “Eat For Two,” the instrumental accompaniment mostly drones along to keep tempo for Merchant and foreshadow for the fans which of their favorite songs is coming up next. As the opening strains of “Candy Everybody Wants” come up, the crowd goes wild. The album is produced to highlight the live nature of the experience (as if the listener would not believe it were live without the noises of the crowd) and the instrumental accompaniment seldom breaks out to add distinction to the songs. The sound of each song – save the second – is so similar to the others on the album that MTV Unplugged managed to create a truly indistinct musical experience. 10,000 Maniacs does not present their most diverse setlist on MTV Unplugged, with most of the songs being slower, ballad-style, droning pop songs.

Vocally, Natalie Merchant dominates MTV Unplugged. Her voice is low and strong. She is articulate and she presents all of the lyrics very clearly. While she seems to have decent lung capacity and a pretty good range, I was surprised in really listening to the album how many times I caught vocal inconsistencies that made it onto MTV Unplugged. At one point in “Because The Night,” Merchant’s voice actually cracks!

Lyrically, 10,000 Maniacs presents nothing especially new on MTV Unplugged. Most of the songs are musical storysongs, complete with characters and themes. Merchant and Rob Buck, who co-wrote most of the songs, seem to have something to say and they say it well. Songs like “What’s The Matter Here?” stand out with distinct lines like, “We live on Morgan Street; / Just ten feet between and his mother, I never see her, / But her screams and cussing, I hear them every day. / Threats like: ‘If you don't mind I will beat on your behind,’ / ‘Slap you, slap you silly.’ / Made me say, ‘O, what's the matter here?’" Thematically, MTV Unplugged allows the 10,000 Maniacs to showcase their diversity with songs ranging from child abuse as a social epidemic to making the most of life (“These Are Days”) to desire (“Candy Everybody Wants”).

Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs also makes a memorable song about the promises of pregnancy with “Eat For Two.” When Merchant sings “They found each other in a wicked world / Strong in some respects / But she couldn’t stand for the way he begged and gave in / Pride is for men, young girls should run and hide instead” (“Eat For Two”), the listener is carried by her voice on a vision of a parent watching her child grow up in fast forward speed.

But MTV Unplugged also illustrates how repetitive and simple some of 10,000 Maniacs’ songs are and that makes it a harder sell than it otherwise might have been. MTV Unplugged is not terrible, but it is not the best work by 10,000 Maniacs and it is hardly the album to get new listeners into the group.

The best song is “Eat For Two,” so many of the other songs gel together indistinctly, making it hard to pick a low point.

For other works by and including Natalie Merchant, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Our Time In Eden - 10,000 Maniacs
In My Tribe - 10,000 Maniacs
Tigerlily
Jealousy (single)
Ophelia
Motherland

4.5/10

For other music reviews, be sure to check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of my music reviews!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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All Of The Pep And Meaning Missing Before Is Found In Our Time In Eden.

The Good: Richness of musical sound, Lyrics, Most of the vocals
The Bad: Somewhat vocally repetitive, Does not hold up as well as one might think.
The Basics: A good album that continues to decline in my mind with each listen, this is a (mostly) solid musical work for fans of pop-rock.


As I move toward the Natalie Merchant c.d.s I have sitting on my desk to review, I had thought to start my exploration of her career with a few 10,000 Maniacs discs. That was going well, until I listened to In My Tribe (reviewed here!) and found myself terribly and completely bored by the music. This was almost enough to keep me from listening to and reviewing Our Time In Eden, the other 10,000 Maniacs disc I had kicking around.

I am, mostly, glad that I did. The first listen offered a world of difference between In My Tribe and not just because I knew more tracks on Our Time In Eden - I was in high school when the album was released and "These Are Days" and "Candy Everybody Wants" were well-played on the radio in those days. The "mostly glad," though comes in the form of the effect of listening to the album repeatedly for four days (broken up by a primer on Paramore and a Paramore concert!) and finding it more and more average than the original impression. It's still a good album, a little above average, but it is not the astonishingly good work I heard on the first listen.

With thirteen tracks clocking in at 48:37, Our Time In Eden is a solid pop-rock endeavor by the 10,000 Maniacs, Natalie Merchant's vehicle band. The quintet wrote three songs together on this album, with three more being co-written by Merchant and Dennis Drew of Rob Buck. The other seven are credited to Merchant alone and she sings the primary vocals as well as plays the piano on the album. The four men of the band provide the musical accompaniment and they are not credited with anything else. No one from the band is credited with production or mixing credits, so it is hard to evaluate how much this work reflects the artistic intentions of the 10,000 Maniacs vs. the record label. Given the strength of Natalie Merchant's personality in interviews, it seems like it would be hard to argue that this is not her artistic vision as so much of the album falls under her creative control.

Our Time In Eden is an intriguing combination of the rebellious ("Candy Everybody Wants"), disillusionment ("Eden"), loss ("How You've Grown") and youthful enthusiasm ("These Are Days"). Thematically, there is a somewhat unifying theme of opportunities lost across the entire album. This is an album that largely involves cycles and people turning away, aging, moving on. To that end, the album works remarkably well, especially under the pen of Natalie Merchant.

On songs like "Jezebel," Merchant fearlessly tells a musical story with a wrenching sense of honesty rarely seen in pop music. With lines like "To think of my task is chilling. / To know I was carefully building the mast I was wearing for two years, searing I'd tear it off. / I've sat in the dark explaining to myself that I'm straining to hard for feelings I ought to find easily" ("Jezebel"), Merchant articulates with a realism and psychologically horrific honesty what few artists do. "Jezebel" sings about the coldness that comes when one realizes they are not in love and instead of degenerating into a typical pop-rock breakup song, it carefully explores the conflict that comes from not feeling.

Similarly, "I'm Not The Man" is a song about a death row inmate! While folk-rock and even country music might make a song about a wrongly accused person waiting to die, only Richard Marx's "Hazard" comes to mind as a similar song in pop-rock. But there it is, with lines like "On the day he was tried no witness testified. / Nothing but evidence, not hard to falsify. / His own confession was a prosecutor's prize, / Made up of fear, of rage / And of outright lies" ("I'm Not The Man"). And it works to close the album off better than most would think!

The contrast, of course, between the largely conceptual and bigger world themes comes with the universal tracks, like "These Are Days." Perhaps a graduating high school student's favorite, "These Are Days" simply exhorts listeners to live and enjoy the time they are in with lines like "These are days you might fill with laughter until you break. / These are days you might feel a shaft of light make its way across your face / And when you do you'll know how it was meant to be. See the signs and know their meaning." It's simple, it's direct and it's hard to not relate to the "everybody's alive, so live" message of the song.

Vocally, the album is dominated by Natalie Merchant and this is both good and is one of the problems with Our Time In Eden. On this album, Merchant presents her vocals as an almost universally mid-range collection in the alto and tenor ranges. She has a huskier voice, one with force behind her making it a very natural comparison to Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane (or Jefferson Starship). Merchant has a wonderful singing voice.

The problem is it is almost entirely absent from this album. While initially I enjoyed the very full sound of the album, the more I replayed it, the more I noticed that Merchant's voice is cleaned up and produced over on most of the tracks. Production elements like reverb and backing vocals that almost drown out her voice undermine the quality of her natural talents. Indeed, only the first half of "Eden" has a truly worthwhile presentation of Merchant's natural vocal talents (she performed at the first concert I went to!) before the backing vocals and other elements begin to encroach upon her sound.

That's not to say it is bad, but it is very much pop rock in the vocal department. Most of the tracks are up-tempo numbers with only the piano solo "How You've Grown" standing out as a slower, mostly vocally-driven track.

But the vocals seeming pop-oriented is truly no surprise given that the rest of the album sounds purely pop rock. This is a guitar, bass, keyboards and drums band with a generally upbeat sound and the ability to move an audience with the infectious tunes it puts out.

The problem is, even on this album some of the songs sound alike. When "Few And Far Between's" first notes play, I always think it is "Candy Everybody Wants." "Stockton Gala Days" could be the archetypal pop-rock sound, in that it is easy to listen to, has a sense of movement and having listened to this album eight times now, I am troubled to note that I have no idea what I'm hearing when I hear that song. I could not pick it out of a line-up; it is a generic pop-rock theme and it feels like one with its hypnotic bassline, somewhat bland drumming, and lack of a real tune.

Ultimately, that's how Our Time In Eden wore down on me. It stands out as dramatically better than some other albums, like "In Our Tribe," but I found it barely above average; a solid seven on my usual ten-point scale.

The best track is "Eden," the low point is the generic "Stockton Gala Days."

For other, former female Artist Of The Month reviews, please check out my takes on:
Goodbye Alice In Wonderland - Jewel
The Best Of The Songbooks - Ella Fitzgerald
Break Every Rule - Tina Turner

7/10

Check out how this album stacks up against others I have reviewed by visiting my Music Review Index Page where the reviews are organized best to worst!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Thoroughly Bland Pop-Rock Mars 10,000 Maniacs' In My Tribe (My Next Female Artist Of The Month!)

The Good: Moments of lyrics, Moments of voice
The Bad: Musically boring, Does not "say" anything unique
The Basics: The 10,000 Maniacs present a musically dull, vocally stunted album with wonderful lyrics that offers little to a new listener.


As I gear up for an immersion in the musical works of Natalie Merchant, I decided to prep myself with a few 10,000 Maniacs c.d.s. Before I picked the two up that I have, I had never heard a full disc by the 10,000 Maniacs and my experiences with Natalie Merchant were limited to her solo radio efforts and my first concert, where she was one of the headliners (she does an awesome cover of "Wonderwall," by the way). I like much of what I've heard from Merchant and when I picked up In My Tribe, I was surprised to find that every song on the album was written or co-written by Natalie Merchant. It made me wonder why she couldn't live with the band and went solo (much like Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty).

Is it possible that the four men who provide the musical accompaniment to Natalie Merchant and/or the ones - most notably Robert Buck - who co-wrote with Merchant demanded too much for her artistic integrity to handle? I'm sure there is a whole backstory, song and lore told about the 10,000 Maniacs that clarifies all of that, but it's not on this disc. Instead, In My Tribe presents a light pop-rock sound that could be virtually any college band and after eight listens, I'm still trying to find what it was that made this band even a remote success. The only song I knew from this disc before playing it was "Like The Weather" and I am unsure when I actually knew it from.

With eleven tracks clocking in at 43:31 minutes, In My Tribe seems very much to be the intellectual and creative work of Natalie Merchant and the 10,000 Maniacs, with the band writing and performing all of the songs. While none of the band is credited with the production half of the album, there does not appear to be any serious evidence of creative differences on the album. Thus, 10,000 Maniacs seems to bear the responsibility for their own sound and album.

It's boring.

In My Tribe is boring. I'm on my ninth listen as I write this and there is nothing interesting or truly distinctive about the album. I've been listening, trying to find what the hook was, what made this band stand out and I don't hear it. Natalie Merchant could seem like the Grace Slick of 10,000 Maniacs, but her voice is produced to lose some of its weight and the entire album has a strangely narcoleptic quality to it.

What generally works are the lyrics. The songs on In My Tribe tend to tell musical stories and there is a folk-rock quality to the writing on the album, with songs like "The Painted Desert" illustrating a higher level of diction than most pop rock songs. With lines like "The Painted Desert can wait till summer. / We've played this game of just imagine long enough. / ... When I'm sure the rain has ended, the blooms have gone, every one killed by the morning frost. Is a cactus blooming there upon the Northern Rim or in the ruins of the Hopi mesa dens?" ("The Painted Desert") 10,000 Maniacs illustrates that they have something to say and they use an uncommon level of imagery. This is a refreshing change from most bands that sound like they might be most successful on the college radio circuit.

But more than just with imagery, the group explores some essential human sense of struggles. On the opening track about child abuse, Merchant plaintively asks, "Answer me and take your time / what could be the awful crime / he could do at so young an age? / If I'm the only witness to your madness / offer me some words to balance out what I see / and what I hear" ("What's The Matter Here?"). Not since Suzanne Vega's Solitude Standing which contained "Luka" have I heard an artist or group so fearlessly tackle such a difficult subject. That is admirable and it works here quite well.

What doesn't are the tracks that seem more commercial. "Don't Talk" is a terribly repetitive song with Merchant repeating "Talk talk talk about it, / you talk as if you care / but when your talk is over / tilt that bottle in the air . . ." so much that by the time one gets to the third listen to the song, all one hears is the somnambulic presentation of "talk" and shuts the song out.

Perhaps the lyrics would be better presented if the voice backing them were more . . . variable. The reference to Grace Slick is not a bad one. Natalie Merchant has the ability to present a sense of force to her voice that is quite powerful. Unfortunately, it never comes into its own on In My Tribe. Instead, the mixers and engineers keep Merchant's voice carefully balanced to the volume of the instrumentals. While there are songs like "My Sister Rose" where the instrumentals drown out the vocals, there is no reciprocal track on the album where Merchant effectively takes out the instrumentals. Instead, for the bulk of the album, Merchant is given the same weight as the instrumentals and she fails to shine.

The net effect of the vocals is a sense that Merchant is muted. Even without having heard Merchant since, on her own, there is a clear sense that this is a voice that can be doing more than it is on In My Tribe. It sounds like it is filtered, pacified. That makes the vocals boring, stilted. We hear the potential, but it is never actualized. Instead, we wait for it to erupt and actually SING, but instead it musically "says" the lines.

The closest to breaking free Merchant gets vocally is "A Campfire Song," which features Michael Stipe of R.E.M. His performance on this album instantly reminds one of his songs and musical place from the I.R.S. years (encapsulated on the album reviewed here!). Merchant and Stipe play off one another well and even though Merchant never fully breaks out, Stipe's background vocals are distinctive and he sounds remarkably free in his vocal presentation.

What drags the album down even more than the vocals is the instrumental accompaniment. 10,000 Maniacs on In My Tribe accompany Merchant's voice-full-of-potential with guitars, bass, keyboards and drums in a presentation that is oh-so-dull. It seems like including everyone on each track is a priority and as a result, the sound of each song is remarkably similar to every other one on the album.

The drums from Jerome Augustyniak seem especially dull and indistinct. On "City Of Angels," he bangs his drums lightly in a way that seems calculated only to remind the listener that there is a drum present, as opposed to saying anything musically important or relevant with the drum part. In other words, this is a musically bland presentation.

None of the songs have terribly distinctive melodies and the end result was after several listens, I'm not entirely certain I could pick out a single song if I heard a muzak version of it. Come to think of it, without Merchant's - even muted! - vocals, this 10,000 Maniacs album might best be described as as musically interesting as musak. And who truly needs that in their collection? Most of the songs are slow and sound like a mellow, artistic garage band.

I have no idea who might like this other than people who want music to fall asleep by and those who like vaguely melodic musical presentations that will not leave anything so memorable as an impression upon the listener. Perhaps the reason Merchant eventually struck out on her own was more that she woke up and the rest of the group was still asleep and she went onto the next gig, more than any real creative differences . . .

The best track is "The Painted Desert," the worst is the repetitive and poppy "Don't Talk."

For other, former, female artist of the month reviews, check out:
The Best Of Janis Ian (2 CD + Exclusive DVD) – Janis Ian
“Jackie’s Strength” (Single) – Tori Amos
Beginnings - Shania Twain

4/10

For other music reviews, check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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