10,000 Maniacs Are Missing Some Attitude

When 10,000 Maniacs first appeared over a decade ago, it was a tender folk-rock band with good taste, an alternative guitar jangle and a social conscience. The combination worked until singer Natalie Merchant left the band for a solo career in 1993, an event that most felt was the outfit’s death knell.

Resurrected with a new album, “Love Among the Ruins,” and a new singer, Mary Ramsey, the dogged group came to the Troubadour on Wednesday, where it displayed the Maniacs’ lush sophistication but suffered from the absence of Merchant’s ornery star power and spiky attitude.

On a stage strewn with weathered old lamps, an Oriental rug and a battered night stand, the band was obviously trying to conjure a bedroom feel. But Ramsey, who occasionally played viola and has a higher, sweeter and much less distinctive voice than Merchant, looked as if she would have been far happier in a studio than on stage, where she appeared stiff and uncomfortable.

Ramsey was clearly more at ease with the newer and less interesting songs: the sweet pop of “Rainy Day” and the subtle folk jangle of “Shining Light.” While the new songs reached for poetic lyricism, they felt soft and sentimental instead.

By the time the group delved into two dark, desperate tunes, Roxy Music’s “More Than This” and Patti Smith’s “Because the Night” (a 1993 Maniacs hit recorded before Merchant departed), it was obvious that the band’s new incarnation needs some darkness and spice to balance out the cloying sweetness.