Pop Reviews: Getting the Message With Sights ‘n’ Sounds : 10,000 Maniacs Visit the Southland

Natalie Merchant, ravishing lead singer and lyricist of the equally ravishing rock quintet 10,000 Maniacs, is in many of her songs a consigner in concern--a musical merchant of angered consideration for the poor, the dispossessed, the enslaved, abused children, American Indians, Nicaraguans, veterans, what-have-you.

Latest cause: the future hearing-impaired.

“Shouldn’t you be wearing your earplugs?” she asked a security guard standing in front of the stageside speakers during a show early Sunday evening at the Santa Barbara County Bowl--the opening of a five-show Southern California swing for the band. Said guard indicated he liked the music too much to obstruct his ear canals. “You like the songs? As much as I like the songs, I wouldn’t stand there unprotected,” she said. The guard dutifully put them in. “Just concerned about your safety,” Merchant added with a smile, tongue seemingly not very far in cheek at all.

If such a penchant for maternal heedfulness suggests that Merchant is some kind of rock ‘n’ roll mother figure, nothing could be further from the truth: What didacticism there is in her bears the angry imprimatur of unspoiled, youthful idealism carried on and branded into a wide-eyed, tender-hearted, liberally world-conscious adulthood that’s plenty risky enough.

And in the redoubtable 10,000 Maniacs, she has a world-class band to push her into still graceful fits of seeming physical abandon. Much as she hates to hear this kind of stuff, she could just be the (gag) sex symbol for a generation, the one that sorta identifies with “thirtysomething” but hates its apologetic gentility, the one that wants some juice-churning intestinal fortitude with its prettiness.

Letting the easily distracted and prone-to-informality Merchant sing for a California audience in broad daylight could have been a mistake. Sunday’s set began shortly after 6 with the group’s strongest song, the child-abuse ditty “What’s the Matter Here?,” but Merchant was operating by rote at best, thanks to the sun in her eyes. The number was redeemed only by a rabid solo by guitarist Robert Buck that took the tastefulness of the recorded version and turned it inside out--a sign of terrific things to come.

Once Merchant became shaded later, her performance took better shape even as she still spent much of the set nonchalantly observing the sort of things she doesn’t usually get to in the dark--the dozens of fluorescent pink T-shirts among the largely shorts-clad crowd, the way certain members of the crew at the sound board dance. “Ooh, I see that little boy up there showing his belly to his sister,” she cooed at one point, then apologized for making them self-conscious: “Didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

Self-consciousness is not a problem of Merchant’s. She was motionless enough in the early portions of the set, befitting her adjustment to the setting, but eventually let go with the violent, balletic twists for which she’s known, joyful pirouettes that really do complement emotional turns in the faster songs. (This isn’t Stevie Nicks we’re talking about.) And she was loose enough to exclaim “oops” by the time she hit a sour note in a closing solo piano medley.

Her lovely voice with the impossible-to-place accent could sing the proverbial Yellow Pages and be believable, but is much more so in the service of a protest song such as “Please Forgive Us,” a plea of ignorance of Oliver North and the likes addressed to a blood-spattered Central America. It was honey in the soothing “Trouble Me” and venom in the spiteful “You Happy Puppet,” which she sang wearing a massive, ugly costume.

The evolution of 10,000 Maniacs from an R.E.M.-like groove-oriented folk-rock band to a more pop song-oriented format has been both commercially and aesthetically agreeable, but in concert, the group was able to find a fire that the recorded mix doesn’t usually allow. “Headstrong,” a recent track in which the band is mixed too low on album, was as noisy and beautifully distorted as you’d hope live.

And not enough can be said in commendation of Buck, whose mostly gentle but occasionally buck-wild stylization subtly incorporates everything from surf-guitar tones to flamenco and who spends an inordinate amount of time squeezing out notes from the high end of his guitar neck, making for unusually bright tones even in minor keys.

10,000 Maniacs plays the Greek Theatre tonight and Wednesday, with further Southland dates Friday at Irvine Meadows and Saturday at San Diego’s Open Air Amphitheatre. Camper Van Beethoven, a somewhat goofier but equally hard-hitting and worthwhile combo, opens all the shows.