Natalie Merchant's voice is penetrating and this album flows song-to-song so that it can easily be listened to non-stop, over and over again. The songs are not distractig so that you could listen to them intently while driving, or tune them out as background music while at work. Rocking, yet mellow - an excellent CD.


A surprising little find   July 12, 2006
 12 out of 13 found this review helpful

It's amazing what you can find buried under a pile of junk in the local as-is Goodwill. Sometimes you can find near mint condition CDs, such as "10,000 Maniacs Unplugged." That's exactly what happened to me a few months ago.

I was only vaguely aware of 10,000 Maniacs when this album was released in the early 1990s. I liked the song "Because the Night," but my fan-dom stopped there. So, based on my vague familiarity with that one song, I paid Goodwill the requisite dollar and was on my way. I figured one dollar wasn't too much to spend for that one song. And I was certain that all I'd get out of this CD was that one song, expecting all the others to be duds.

Several months down the line, it's hard to believe that I had ever thought these songs would be duds, and it's hard to imagine that it took me so long to become interested in 10,000 Maniacs.

These songs are really astonishing! Every one of them is beautiful, and every one of them is heavy with a social conscience and message, almost to the point of being intimidating. In some ways this has been a very shocking album. You see, when I decided to listen beyond that one song, what hooked me was the breezy melody of just about every other song. They all seemed so upbeat and happy, and the ballads seemed gentle and lulling. I couldn't understand much of what Natalie Merchant was singing about, because her glossy intonation often results in a somewhat blurred diction, making individual words hard to decipher. But that was fine because I didn't feel I needed to understand the words. I just hummed along with the melody, or snapped my fingers to the beat.

After a few months of not being able to understand what Natalie Merchant was singing, I decided to look up the lyrics. On the song "What's the Matter Here?" I had been able to make out only the words "I have heard the excuses everybody uses." When I decided to take a look at the lyric sheet and see what the excuses were about, I was shocked. I thought it would be excuses made by a dishonest lover. But the song is actually about child abuse and the excuses people make as they look the other way. The full line is, "I have heard the excuses everybody uses. He's their kid. I stay out of it. But get it through that I don't agree with what you did to your own flesh and blood." I've often wanted to say to parents, "Answer me. Take your time. What could be the awful crime he could do at such a young age?"

I then decided to look up the lyrics to one of the other songs I had taken a liking to, "I'm Not the Man." One of my other favorite singers is Sade, and she has a love song called "You're Not the Man," so I figured this Maniacs song with the similar title would have of a similar topic. Wrong again. It's actually about a man on death row. The lyrics are, "But I'm not the man. He goes free as I wait on the row, for the man to test the rope, he'll slip around my throat, and silence me. Call out the KKK, they're wild after me."

I shouldn't have been surprised when I found that "Like the Weather" is not the lighthearted and summery little ditty I had thought it was, but is a song about a bed-ridden elderly person. "And by the force of will my lungs are filled, and so I breathe. Lately, it seems this here bed is where I never leave. I get a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather. A quiver in my lips as if I may cry."

And the song "Hey Jack Kerouac" piqued my interest in the life of a writer I now feel is a kindred soul. After studying a bit about his life, I now understand why Natalie Merchant begins the song with, "Hey, Jack Kerouac, I think of your mother and the tears she cried. They were cried for none other than the little boy lost in the little world that hated and that dared to drag him down, the little boy courageous." Kerouac died of alcoholism in his late forties while still living at home with his mother.

Suffice it to say that this is a heavy album. (Did I mention that "Eat for Two" is about a young unwed pregnant girl who regrets giving in to her boyfriend's pressures? "Pride is for men," Merchant sings, "Young girls should run and hide instead.") If you want a happy, upbeat album, you may need to look elsewhere, or perhaps avoid reading the lyrics! If you want an album with a social conscience, this may be it.

After reading a little bit about Natalie Merchant, I find that it was perhaps inevitable that I'd be a fan of this album. She is sometimes referred to as "the Emily Dickinson of pop music." Emily Dickinson is my favorite writer.

Andrew Michael Parodi


Great!   October 13, 2006
 10 out of 10 found this review helpful

The 10,000 Maniacs have been around since 1981, and it has been a great ride. This album came out in 1993, and features Natalie Merchant's excellent vocals. The band survived Natalie's move to a solo career, and she has done well on her own, but I must say that this album is when they all reached their absolute peak! With the excellent instrumentation and Natalie's beautiful voice, this is a great album to listen to.

I love this album, and its mix of bouncy and soulful tunes, especially These Are Days, Jezebel and Because The Night. This is a great album, one that is sure to please anyone who loves great music, especially unplugged music. I love this album, and give it my highest recommendations!


Quintessential CD, you have to own it   May 16, 2001
 8 out of 10 found this review helpful

This is just a great CD. All of my favorite Maniacs songs are on this CD. I own a number of Maniacs CDs, and this is by far my favorite.

A lot of times artists will play around a lot when they play live with the rhythms and sound, and it totally changes the way the songs sound. This CD is a rare exception of this back trend in recorded live music. The music sounds even better than the studio recordings.