Her songs can be surprisingly difficult to describe. As a music-biz veteran, it’s confounding: Aren’t aging artists supposed to be living off the proceeds of the past, scheduling reunion gigs or playing beloved albums in their entirety? Her reluctance to play that particular game has been refreshing, albeit certainly not lucrative, although 3 Decades Of Song suggests she is at long last willing to survey her catalog. That made her compelling as a young woman, when she was an artist writing songs about systemic abuse and oppression and releasing them on a major label (long before Conor Oberst faced a similar contradiction). Her interviews are full of declarations of disdain for the industry and all the aspects of band life that might distract from the art itself. She has rarely waxed nostalgic for her youth or her old band, has never seemed to care about the typical markers of success. A recent and highly informal poll of young people in my college town revealed that no one had heard a lick of their music. But 10,000 Maniacs seem to have been forgotten almost completely: Younger musicians aren’t dropping them into lists of influences, their albums aren’t getting deluxe anniversary reissues. U2 have their heads way up their asses, technologically and musically speaking. ![]() (It is, by the way.) Indigo Girls have become a cult folk act. aren’t resonating with millennials, either because their ignominious end is still too fresh or because kids are tired of hearing every dude over 40 telling them that Murmur is the greatest thing ever. ![]() It’s no surprise that Merchant hasn’t had the cachet she enjoyed in the ’80s and ’90s, when she fronted the Jamestown, NY band 10,000 Maniacs and eventually went solo with a string of modest hits like “Carnival” and “Wonder.” In fact, many of her peers from those two decades have suffered in the new century.
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