What's the Matter Here?

I've never been a tremendous fan of Natalie Merchant's records, though I do admire her distinctive, semi-lispy voice--instantly recognizable whenever it can be heard. Combined with the musicality of a crack band like 10,000 Maniacs, Merchant's voice often met the boys more than halfway, providing a melancholy tone to some stirring instrumentation (reaching a peak in songs like "Don't Talk," about an abusive drunk).

Merchant sacrificed a great band for a solo career, one in which her sentimental and more cloying lyrical tendencies were allowed free reign. The Maniacs followed a similar course, and I find their early albums, particularly In My Tribe, to be their best. That album contains possibly the best pop song ever written about a literary figure this side of Dylan ("Hey Jack Kerouac"), a song which itself contains one of the best critical assessments of Allen Ginsberg ever written, in pop music or otherwise ("Allen baby, why so jaded?/Have the boys all grown up/and their beauty faded?"). The album also offers the most heartbreaking song about Los Angeles I've ever heard ("City of Angels," which ranks, in my estimation, just above NWA's "Fuck Tha Police" and Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge"), and a stunning first-person account of illiteracy ("Cherry Tree"). It's a gorgeous record.

Merchant left the band after another two albums, and I've never felt compelled to listen to an entire album of hers since. Apparently, I'm in the minority in this regard, as Merchant achieved much more success and widespread recognition with her pop solo albums than she ever did with the Maniacs, who never quite managed to break out of the college radio circuit.

The fact remains that hers is a original, appealing voice and that her solo career was a commercial success. All the more confusing and frustrating, then, is the state of her career now, as explained in a review of her recent string of performances in New York City, her first concerts there in four years. Writing for the NYT, Jon Pareles notes that Merchant has no recording contract, though she is still writing songs and, evidently, playing to enthusiastic crowds.

Merchant's situation provides yet another damning indictment of the recording industry today, an industry that seems intent on making itself extinct through the continued persecution of its fans, its failure to meet the consumer demands of its market, and its unabated pursuit of quick profit at the expense of developing and encouraging artistic talent.

Whatever your opinion of Natalie Merchant, the fact that this distinctive musical voice has no other venue to offer her songs other than live performance says a great deal about the music industry's ignorance and its imminent collapse. It's time that we had a more effective way of hearing the kind of music we prefer, and that artists like Natalie Merchant had a better way of reaching her audience.