please tell me your favourite 10,000 Maniacs song and why

People who do not like them need not apply!

"My Mother the War." Good riff. Moves. More smart than pretentious. (I do realize that no Maniacs fan is going to agree with me....)

nabisco science: LAY OFF NATALIE MERCHANT

Bring Me To Life

"can't ignore the train" is pretty great. another vote for john lombardo-era 10km.

You Happy Puppet lyrics so accurate and great jaunty tune

I had a prof who looked like an older Natalie Merchant.

Haha this thread is so short!

I think it's interesting somehow that N Merchant was on the cusp of 30 when thy did Our Time in Eden.

'Hey Jack Kerouac'

and why..?
I love the middle eightish part with no singing in it

"Headstrong"

I air drum to this song every time I play it.

"Candy Everybody Wants", idk why, but there is this really great shot in the music video of Natalie Merchant spitting out a Froot Loop!!!

"Don't Talk" maybe?

Missed this thread when it first came out so thanks for the revive. Oh, so many favourites. Probably "Noah's Dove".

"Jezebel" kicks, that's my fav. I love how she somehow sings in meter words that do not scan that way when you read it. she does this on a lot of songs but the chorus of "Jezebel", especially the last run through the chorus, is an exemplar of this.

well, this or "Planned Obsolescence".

Not sure I've ever heard much from these guys. Worth digging out the catalog?

From the very beginning up through Blind Man's Zoo, definitely. Some people love Our Time in Eden, but I wasn't crazy about it (though perhaps I should reinvestigate, as it's been 20+ years since I've listened to it).

in hs my friend and her bf and i made a video for "eat for two" for our video art class, so that i guess
in the part of the song where "the eggman fell down off his shelf" featured my friend frustratedly trying to break an egg

i think natalie merchant was born 30

it was actually a video production class, not video art
the narrative music video was an assignment we had and apparently this is the best idea we could come up with

Listening to "In My Tribe," and it's a struggle. Just not my thing, I guess. It's like a pretentious, less interesting ... Kirsty MacColl?

Maybe try the Hope Chest compilation? That's the very earliest of their recordings all in one place.

Will try. That other stuff was sort of insufferable.

I love love loved In My Tribe when it came out. Don't Talk was always my favorite but now Hey Jack Kerouac

You win a prize for that
For telling lies like that

I was into In My Tribe when it came out, but I've bonded the most with Blind Man's Zoo and it's remained my favorite for 25 years.

The first minute of "Planned Obsolescence" with the dub-influenced bass, organ, crazy guitar effects, and Merchant's frightened voice is spooky 4 a.m.-college-radio-in-1982 shit.

So is all this stuff good, or is this nostalgia speaking? That is, if this is not already a part of my formative listening history, is it something I have any chance/need to get into on the cusp of 40?

Well, you don't need to eat sunflower seeds, but they're alright if they're lying around.

Faint praise.

"Planned Obsolescence" sounds OK, in a minor Martha and the Muffins sort of way. Will stick with Hope Chest a bit.

This is "My Mother The War" for me, too. Love the New Order-y bass, the washes of noise guitar and Natalie's a match for early Stipe in the inscrutable mumblings department. I like plenty of their later stuff fine, but once Joe Boyd decided they were Fairport Convention and then Peter Asher started glossing things up even further, I began to lose interest. Still really love her voice.

it is not good imo

Here are fifteen tracks, boring in a weird way or weirdly boring.

what for?

man this popped up on my shuffle today and it was possible to remember why they created such a stir in the college rock world at one point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0Be784nT5k

“These Are Days” is my favorite 10,000 Maniacs song (and I was heavily into this band as a teen, deep into all their shit).

That song — their big, late-career “hit” — is kind of an arrestingly perfect single to me, even now.

I was deep into that “Verdi Cries” and “Poor De Cherico” shit, Holmes!

“Verdi Cries” is a gorgeous song.

I don't consider myself THAT big a fan, but I can name at least a dozen songs which haven't even been mentioned here that I absolutely adore.

But Jezebel wins (that whole album is gorgeous)

(Blind Man's Zoo was my very first CD)

I love "These Are Days."

"Scorpio Rising" would absolutely destroy on any mixtape of '80s rock tracks... what a song!

(this song "Cotton Alley," which I didn't even remember, is also casually better than 99.999% of extant songs)