(Elektra)
We just talked about 10,000 Maniacs recently in one of the more unkind entries I've posted so far. But I believe in balance, and eventually in offering a fairly complete picture of the bands I discuss here, and there's no getting around it: this live record is pleasant, and the best way to hear Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs. I guess there are two reasons why Unplugged succeeds where the studio LPs fail. First is that the band simply had some power that came to the foreground exclusively on stage; for sure, Merchant's passion seems more genuine outside the studied constraints of the albums, though her spontaniety and control as a singer would soon reach its all-time peak with the brilliant single "Carnival" -- just prior to which she split permanently from the Maniacs -- and never muster up any kind of wonder again.
The other reason is that the tracklist functions as a sort of Weakest Leak scrapbook, preserving only the most durable and (relatively) interesting songs in this catalog. Only "Don't Talk" and "These Are Days" fail to improve on the studio recordings; even the band's best song, the admittedly moving "Eat for Two," attains a sparkle and punch in the new setting. "Candy Everybody Wants" is far less obnoxious with a more muted arrangement; opening up a song like "Hey Jack Kerouac" does wonders for its emotional effect; "Like the Weather" starts to actually sound vaguely like pop music instead of easy-listening; the minimalism of "Trouble Me" -- save a stray electric guitar -- lets its sweetness come out, because its sentiment ("Trouble me on the day when you feel spent") is one worth trusting; and "Jezebel" is, frankly, just a beautiful song. It's on the whole easier in this format to get past the tired clichés in 10KM's sense of texture, which opened the door to the equally questionable Wallflowers; one more bit of organ "atmosphere" and they'd be pushing it.
As with the pointless Nirvana rendition of "The Man Who Sold the World," the best-known recording on 10,000 Maniacs' Unplugged is a cover, otherwise unrecorded in their catalog. "Because the Night" received considerable radio play across several formats; the band is correct to build on the song's drama and give it extra propulsion and size. Where it falls short is, ironically, in Merchant herself, ordinarily the band's strong point by far. She can't keep up with either the letter or the spirit of Patti Smith's (and Bruce Springsteen's) words or melody; a comparison to the Smith original reveals layers of confidence, emotion, and sensual ambiguity that Merchant is all too rote and by-the-book in her performance to suggest. Smith wrote her lyrics underneath an intoxicating haze of love and it comes through in the sweating vibrance of her singing on the track. Only once in the 10KM version does Merchant suggest this kind of energy, adoration, surrender -- it's when her voice breaks in the bridge on the second "take me now," which is precisely the sort of "mistake" 10,000 Maniacs would probably filter out in the studio (but it's maybe the most revealing, lovely moment in her entire career as a singer). All the more dubious are the changes made to the lyrics; every chorus now sings the praises of being "in your command," which seems counter to the song's purpose. Nevertheless, the flourishes, buildup, and excitement the band musters up capture Merchant well enough in the snowball that she goes mostly unnoticed; one's major reaction is wondering why this is the only time they ever sounded this good.
One of the violists (and backing vocalists) audible on "Because the Night" and the rest of this record is a woman named Mary Ramsey. Upon Merchant's departure, an eventuality of which the band was already aware at the time they recorded Unplugged, Ramsey would take over leadership of 10,000 Maniacs and provide them with one of their biggest hits, an inexplicable, odd remake of Roxy Music's "More Than This" that would turn out to be the last almost anyone heard of them. The accompanying album Love Among the Ruins flopped, hurt undoubtedly by the perhaps unfair publicity afforded the band for continuing without Natalie Merchant but perhaps more by its absence even of what songwriting skill Merchant possessed. Say what you will, but she did knock one out of the park occasionally, the key example being "Carnival," her first single without the Maniacs and her first (and only) top ten hit. 10,000 Maniacs continue in some form to this day. Their guitarist Rob Buck died young and their fan base has dwindled, but they go on playing these songs. Someone must care, and there must be enough magic for some in these old recordings to make that happen.
Lastly, it bears mentioning how severely inaccurate MTV's "unplugged" tag truly was. Yes, this record features mostly acoustic instruments, but so what? What's unplugged about having this many fucking people, including a goddamn string quartet, on stage? More embarrassingly, outside of Nirvana's installment (which doesn't move me but I think it probably would if I didn't have some weird gene that prevents me from being able to stomach Nirvana), this might be the best entry in the "Unplugged" CD series. (At least its radio hit wasn't insufferable like Eric Clapton's disgustingly smug AM-lite revision of "Layla.") 10KM remain bourgeois music firmly rooted in culturally oblivious Summer of Love-era protest pop. All that's missing is the flower power. But in this context, all that seems OK. The most embarrassing moment of the record, and the most telling evidence of the time in which it was recorded, is when Merchant's hysterically stupid Oregon Trail and/or Janette Oke-like narrative ahead of "Gold Rush Brides" (which will remind Beach Boys fans of "The Beaks of Eagles") -- "Three babies were born in our company that summer" -- elicits not one laugh from the MTV audience. Wow, just wow.
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