POP MUSIC : The Tiger Behind the Lily : Don’t let that quiet facade fool you. Erstwhile Maniac Natalie Merchant opens a new chapter with her first solo record--and a fierceness in speaking out for society’s victims.

“A lot of what I do is probably sneered at by women,” says Natalie Merchant, the world’s most demure rock goddess. This anti-Courtney is chatting over tea in a posh Madison Avenue hotel. It’s a simple, elegant room, the kind you’d expect a woman like Merchant to feel at home in. True to her surroundings and her reputation, she speaks quietly and politely. But she’s not mincing words.

“I know that there are women who feel that I’m not powerful enough or aggressive enough,” she continues, stirring honey into her tea. “I’m not submissive, but I have identified through my songs with people who have been victimized or oppressed.

“I think we’re still in one of the early stages of women’s liberation, which is to acknowledge victimization. I just feel like there’s so much history that needs to be rewritten.”

As it turns out, Merchant is now writing a new chapter in her own life. The former lead singer of the folk-pop group 10,000 Maniacs is about to release “Tigerlily,” her debut solo album ( see review, Page 81 ) .

Merchant decided to leave the Jamestown, N.Y.-based band two years ago, at the peak of the Maniacs’ stardom--a pretty bold move for a notoriously dainty individual.

“It was because of the necessity for growth,” Merchant says. “I’d been in the band since I was 17, and with my 30th birthday imminently approaching, I knew that it was time for a change. It didn’t have much to do with the personalities. I just felt that I needed to collaborate with new people.

“Also, I had moved away from Jamestown in 1988, and every time I had to work with the band--because they stayed in Jamestown--it was like going back in time. Almost like going to your parents’ house--after four days, you start feeling like you’re 11 again, and you wonder, ‘How can I be a woman out in the world when I’m sitting here at my father’s dinner table?’

“I gave everyone in the group ample notice. We were in the middle of pre-production for our last studio album, and I agreed that it was a considerate way to leave, and the way that they responded was very respectful. Talking about it now, it seems to prove that musicians are capable of making reasonable decisions and going through with them, just like other people.”

(The Maniacs--with a new lead singer, Mary Ramsey, and original member John Lombardo back in the lineup--are currently recording an album and looking for a label deal.)

Up close, Merchant appears smaller than she does onstage and in videos, and she looks a good decade younger than her 31 years. She still dresses like a well-bred ingenue too--wholesome sweater, tasteful skirt, neat ponytail.

While growing up in rustic Jamestown near the Pennsylvania border, she identified strongly with what she calls the “ruddy” New England character.

“It’s interesting because my father’s family is from Sicily and I’m very close to them,” she says. “But having grown up where I did, I felt I always had more in common with the Anglo-Protestant culture. Katharine Hepburn was like my ideal of the American woman.”

Like Kate, though, Merchant does not come across as uptight or priggish. The singer litters her conversation with casual giggles and self-deprecating asides, exuding an earthy, good-humored warmth that you wouldn’t necessarily expect, given the image many have of her as a fragile, sober, even self-important artist.

It’s an image that Merchant says may be due to all the press she’s done promoting social causes--and, again, to some of her lyrics.

“I have done overtly political songs. Usually they’re my most disastrous attempts at songwriting. But there are things that I’ve felt I needed to say. I think I’ve had the most success, though, when I’ve looked at the relationships between people. My theory is that I try to identify power structures and how they affect relationships.”

Though Merchant describes herself as a “private person, almost reclusive at times,” she’ll discuss her personal views on relationships as readily as she’ll write about them.

“I’ve never been married,” she reports. “I don’t believe much in the institution. I believe in the idea of two people being able to share a bond, whether they’re a man and a woman or two men or two women.

“But I don’t know if that bond needs to be acknowledged by the church or state. A marriage certificate didn’t keep my mother from knowing when she had to separate from my father and my stepfather. I think maybe that says something about the survival of this institution in our culture.”

Yet Merchant can also recognize and wax romantic over a genuine case of wedded bliss. “Beloved Wife,” an elegiac ballad on the new album, was inspired by Merchant’s grandfather, who died two days after losing his wife. “Seeing her in her coffin was too bleak for him,” she says. “He couldn’t imagine life without her.”

After buying a house about an hour north of Manhattan a few years ago, the singer befriended a couple of elderly neighbors, both widowed, who provided more fuel for the song.

“They reminded me of my grandfather--especially this man named Sonny. His wife passed away nine years ago, and he still thinks of her constantly.”

Another death served as the basis for “River,” a song that serves as a tribute to the late actor River Phoenix.

“I didn’t know River very well, to be honest,” Merchant says. “But I respected him. He had such an amazing energy and vitality. He’s a person I thought was living really fully and challenging boundaries. I just wish he had challenged them in different ways--like climbing the Himalayan Mountains or going deep-sea diving--rather than injecting drugs into his veins or whatever he was doing that night.

“But I think what hit me hardest was that there were so many judgments being made about him, based on how he died--as if that negated all the good that he had done or made him unsuitable as a role model for the youth of America. I didn’t think that children should be chastised for mourning someone who had died by his own hands. I felt the same way about Kurt Cobain. You wouldn’t chastise your son and daughter for responding like that to the tragic death of a classmate. That’s why I wrote the song.”

Merchant’s focus was also on young people when she sought a band to record “Tigerlily.”

“I chose musicians who were young and didn’t have much professional experience, because I wanted to avoid the sterile feel you can get from studio musicians who are just clocking in and clocking out,” she says. “The Maniacs had worked with a horn section once, and at one point they were packing up their instruments before a song was finished: ‘You told us it was going to be a four-hour session!’ I didn’t want to go through that again.”

So she hired a trio of relative novices: bassist Barrie Maguire and drummer Peter Yanowitz, who had made one album with the L.A. band the Wallflowers (best known for featuring Bob Dylan’s son, Jakob Dylan), and guitarist Jennifer Turner.

Enlisting a female guitarist had been a goal since Merchant first thought about starting a new band.

“I felt that there are a lot of female bands now but that the level of musicianship isn’t that high among women who play guitar,” she says. “I wanted to prove that guitar-playing isn’t an exclusively male domain.

“Also, I had felt deprived of female company in 10,000 Maniacs, because I was the only woman in the group. One of the things I set out to do when I left the Maniacs was to achieve a gender balance--to have more women in my life.”

The singer acknowledges that she might have gone “a little overboard” in this pursuit.

“I’ve hired a female lawyer, a half-female accounting team, a half-female management team. I have a female sound technician, and I’d like to get a female lighting designer.

“My A&R; person is a woman, and a woman is the president of my record company--an African American woman, which is unheard of,” Merchant says, referring to Sylvia Rhone, head of Elektra Records. “It’s great to have the record company president come to the studio to hear your record and start dancing around!”

Leaving an established group for unknown solo waters can be a risky career move, but Jon Landau, who co-manages Merchant, is confident about the commercial potential of “Tigerlily.”

“I think it’s a very accessible album and more intimate--more expressive of Natalie as an individual--than her work with 10,000 Maniacs was,” says Landau, who also manages Bruce Springsteen. “Before going into the studio, she did a brief tour of college venues in the Northeast to preview the material, and the response was so intense, you felt like the audiences knew the songs without having heard them before.”

It is this sort of enthusiasm that allows Merchant to withstand the criticism she endures for wearing her sensitive heart on her sleeve.

“Music is so magical,” she says. “I’m tired of having to apologize for being moved by what it can do. It’s not an insignificant emotion that’s called up inside me when I see how music can unite an entire room. As a performer, I get energy from that kind of excitement.”

Which brings Merchant back to her original point, about rewriting history:

“I feel so privileged to be living in the Western World now--as opposed to the developing world, where women are still considered to be the possessions of their fathers or husbands. Or 100 years ago here, where a woman’s options were getting married or joining a convent or maybe, if she was lucky, becoming a schoolteacher. I just always assumed that I would be independent--and I can’t imagine doing anything else other than what I’m doing right now.”