Natalie Merchant has let me down

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I realy liked In My Tribe when I was just 14. Now I think she's the most boring songwriter ever.

― Mike Hanle y, Monday, 3 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You didn't really like In My Tribe. You just liked the lady archers on the cover.

― Pete, Monday, 3 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Natalie Merchant is so ridiculously overrated it isn't even funny. She is an enervating performer; in fact, I believe she is actually some type of energy vampire whose performances are actually a cover for orgiastic feeding sessions where she leeches life energy from the poor saps in the audience. I really detest her.

― Dan Perry, Monday, 3 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Plus if no NM then no Edie Brickell! The damage goes deep.

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 3 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I am bemused at how her new album cover is trying to make her out to be the earth mother type. Rather prominently.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 3 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

yeah,and why doesn she always describe her leaving her best musical backing as " I wanted to get away fomr all those men". What about the music?

― Mike Hanle y, Monday, 3 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I never liked 10,000 Maniacs, but thought Merchant was interesting. I did like "Tigerlilly", I acutally own it. Then I heard the follow- up and thought it was boring. But I only heard it once. I didn't know there was a new one, but it doesn't surprise me to learn Hanle y thinks it's boring. I do think she's intelligent and serious, for what that's worth.

― Sean, Monday, 3 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

http://www.jamshowbiz.com/AlbumCoversM/merchant_natalie_mother_16 0.jpg

The new album cover seems to say: look at my immense motherly breasts. (What's even more disturbing is that an article I just looked at while finding this photo says she uses this record as an opportunity to "reveal her R&B influences.")

I liked her better when she looked uncomfortable on stage, then spun around like a psycho during Rob Buck's guitar solos. I remembered why I used to like her for a brief moment while watching a documentary on the second Mermaid Avenue recording -- she was pretending to pick ticks out of Billy Bragg's hair and eat them, which was sort of charming -- but "revealing her R&B influences" sounds more than dreadful enough to cancel that out.

But I do think all the 10,000 Maniacs stuff up through In My Tribe is quite brilliant.

― Nitsuh, Monday, 3 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

mike, go and lsiten to kinky frideman's marilyn and joe...it will explain everything

― geoff, Monday, 3 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

nine months pass...

I think Motherland is a luverly song. In the past Natalie Merchant has really pissed me off though, mostly for covering Peace Train.

I don't think there's anything wrong with her breasts being prominant in the photo on the cover - they are quite likely to be prominant in real life as well. It's not as if breasts are shameful appendages that need to be hidden.

― toraneko (toraneko), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 14:22 (twenty-three years ago)

How can this not be an N. thread?

― Graham (graham), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 14:23 (twenty-three years ago)

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 14:24 (twenty-three years ago)

Well I don't really know who she is but she seems like the kind of person you'd have a crush on and feel let down by when she eg got married/came out/turned you down/went all weird/ect/ect

― Graham (graham), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 14:29 (twenty-three years ago)

No, I don't have a crush on Natalie Merchant and I never feel let down by women as such. She's a loon - did you see her cooing all over BillY Bragg in that Mermaid Avenue documentary?

I associate Natalie Merchant with male friends of my older sister in the late 80s and Bob Mortimer.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 14:32 (twenty-three years ago)

>>> "revealing her R&B influences" sounds more than dreadful enough to cancel that out.

hooray: despite yourself, you have fall into trap of agreeing with the pinefox

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 10 September 2002 15:24 (twenty-three years ago)

Christ, I am so glad I've never heard of this woman.

― Andrew (enneff), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 15:27 (twenty-three years ago)

People appalled by Merchant now really must listen to 10,000 Maniacs' Hope Chest.

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 15:48 (twenty-three years ago)

Her voice was even different! The songs were about bullfighters and nuclear war and multiple personality disorder! She spun around in circles and shouted! You could tell what classes she was taking in school, because suddenly she'd be on about biological taxonomy or the relationship between Breton and de Chirico! "Neck, neck, hook, poles of wood!"

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 15:52 (twenty-three years ago)

Nabisco, you are insane. The only song that 10,000 Maniacs ever recorded that sounded halfway decent in a studio setting was "Eat For Two". Everything else was uninvolving, arm's-length wankery. ("Like The Weather" was good when they did it on SNL, though.)

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 15:59 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't remember Hope Chest as a high point (wasn't it a B-sides compilation?); Our Time In Eden, maybe.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 10 September 2002 16:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Hope Chest!! DO YOU SEE!!!!

― sorry xenakis has sent me insane (mark s), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 16:07 (twenty-three years ago)

Hope Chest combined two EPs they recorded in college, Pinefox, back when they were more of a new-wavey dub combo. And hush, Dan: The Wishing Chair and In My Tribe both had decent amounts of good material (with the latter, yes Pinefox, as more of a peak), and there is absolutely nothing arms-length about Hope Chest -- they were odd and often dancy and often sounded like they should have been on a bill with Talking Heads.

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 17:35 (twenty-three years ago)

I think she becomes more of a self-parody with each new record, but I loved the hell out of Wishing Chair and In my Tribe (to a lesser degree).

― nickn, Wednesday, 11 September 2002 01:21 (twenty-three years ago)

ever been way into an album and thought, i could get by for the rest of my life on this album alone? i remember thinking that about Hope Chest in high school. embarrassing, yes, but Hope Chest really is their best stuff. Check out "Tension."

"Like the Weather," on the other hand, is even lamer than that Edie BRickell song.

― Aaron A., Wednesday, 11 September 2002 04:00 (twenty-three years ago)

HURRAH someone else who shares my love of Hope Chest!! in your FACE, RickyT!!

― katie (katie), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 07:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Hope Chest = 'Natalie Merchants immense motherly breasts' = not something I want in my face

― RickyT (RickyT), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 07:40 (twenty-three years ago)

DO YOU SEE!!

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 07:41 (twenty-three years ago)

Pfft, Katie, it didn't count when I liked it?

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 14:54 (twenty-three years ago)

I think Motherland is a luverly song. In the past Natalie Merchant has really pissed me off though, mostly for covering Peace Train.

They were forced to do it by their record company.

― Christine "Green Leafy Dragon" Indigo (cindigo), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 15:12 (twenty-three years ago)

ooh nabisuh you misunderstand me! RickyT and i haf had MANY ARGUMENTS over 10,000 maniacs (despite him never even having HEARD Hope CHest to my knowledge) so when you and the others on this thread started pointing out that it was grebt i was like "hurrah there DO YOU SEE evil RickyT there are others who like it also!" um or something. do you see?

― katie (katie), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 15:33 (twenty-three years ago)

Sorry, RickyT still wins the conversation with his "Hope Chest" gag.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 15:38 (twenty-three years ago)

Pfft, Dan, it didn't count when I made it?

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 16:05 (twenty-three years ago)

I have heard Hope Chest. You played it to me. It was rub, like virtually everything they have done. There was ONE SONG on In My Tribe that had ONE good bit, ONCE, when I was DRUNK, and THAT'S IT!

― RickyT (RickyT), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 16:07 (twenty-three years ago)

Mark: Sorry, but execution counts for 3/5 of the final score. Blame the French judge.

I maintain that "Eat For Two" is the only 10,000 Maniacs song worth anything. The recorded version of "Like The Weather" made me absolutely hate them with no mercy.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 16:10 (twenty-three years ago)

Katie: the singular "someone," coming right after Aaron's posts, was what got me pouting. See look: 8(

Everyone else: Katie and Aaron are right. Shut up or something.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 17:22 (twenty-three years ago)

I will interpret "something" to mean "continue to make fun of 10,000 Maniacs".

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 17:34 (twenty-three years ago)

Cards on table: who here has actually heard and remembers Hope Chest? Who doesn't remember exactly but is just pretty sure it must not be very good?

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 18:38 (twenty-three years ago)

Because I listened to it a lot around ages 13-15, and when I found my copy a few months ago I was still surprised by how remarkably good it is, much more interesting than I'd remembered it being. It's very much disconnected from what they went on to do.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 18:40 (twenty-three years ago)

Hope Chest is fantastic. Some of those weird guitar sounds are still refreshing ("Planned Obsolescence", "My Mother the War"), and good lord, it has some of the happiest-sounding yet lyrically-depressing songs I can think of ("Orange" being a totally boppy pop song about AGENT ORANGE). Too bad Buck didn't do any more strange guitar stuff and later stuck to the lemme-play-the-hell-out-of-this-one-chord style. The Wishing Chair is good, but re-recording "Tension" and "My Mother the War" was completely unnecessary. (I like its version of "Daktari" better than the Hope Chest version, though.) In My Tribe has some minor annoyances, like preachiness ("What's the Matter Here?") or beat generation name-dropping ("Hey Jack Kerouac") for example, but the music is outstanding, if a little more reserved than before. "Don't Talk" is the track to which I keep coming back. By the time of Blind Man's Zoo, they had somehow entered the realm of Adult Contemporary - fairly decent, though, if a little less memorable. Our Time in Eden I found to be almost completely bland and lifeless. I gave my copy away, and before I did I thought I'd rip the worthwhile tracks from it - I finally decided that there was only one good track on it, "Few and Far Between" (a sadly appropriate title).

I think my immediate response to seeing the cover of Motherland was to laugh, in a kind of Russ Meyer-funny way.

The Onion's AV Club has a scathing review of Merchant's Ophelia video, here. Haven't seen it, sounds awful.

― Ernest P., Wednesday, 11 September 2002 20:41 (twenty-three years ago)

Wait wait: there's a re-recorded version of "Daktari" on The Wishing Chair? There isn't on my copy!

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 21:05 (twenty-three years ago)

I just checked a discography, and "Daktari" was a CD bonus track tacked on The Wishing Chair (along with "The Colonial Wing").

― Ernest P., Wednesday, 11 September 2002 21:23 (twenty-three years ago)

eight years pass...

still down

― Latham Green, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 16:53 (fourteen years ago)

looool

― hippy borthday, free wings for u (Matt P), Tuesday, 7 June 2011 16:58 (fourteen years ago)

still a secret huge rack

― hippy borthday, free wings for u (Matt P), Tuesday, 7 June 2011 16:58 (fourteen years ago)

secret? ho can it be huge and secret

― Latham Green, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 17:05 (fourteen years ago)

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