10,000 Maniacs

This was the band's lushly written swan song, released just before Natalie Merchant departed for a solo career. Merchant's voice and the band's backing are confident and clever, and although the music is still dominated by guitar-based pop, they stretch out with some reeds for both joyful ("Candy Everybody Wants") and dour ("Jezebel") results. Though "These Are Days" got clobbered into our heads with ubiquitous airplay, the most skillfully written tune here is "Gold Rush Brides."

Our Time In Eden': the title is an imagined memory as well as the statement of a Utopian
ideal. In the vision of Natalie Merchant, the singer and primary songwriter of 10,000
Maniacs, the high-minded belief that somehow life – and our individual lives within it – is
perfectible battles a deeper, Catholic assumption that we are fallen beings and no amount
of effort on our part can re-create paradise, or possibly even a livable world, no... More >