(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Natalie Merchant had become the principal songwriter of the 10,000 Maniacs starting with In My Tribe (Elektra, 1987), and each subsequent album had been increasingly “hers” rather than the group’s.

Natalie Merchant achieved her artistic peak, however, with her first true solo album, Tigerlily (Elektra, 1995). Having left behind the New Wave ambitions that had constrained her artistic personality for ten years, the Natalie Merchant of San Andreas Fault and Cowboy Romance is simply a singer-songwriter in the tradition of Carole King and Joni Mitchell, relying on sophisticated folk-jazz arrangements for her delicate melodies. Continuity with the 10,000 Maniacs is guaranteed by the “nocturnal” rock of River, the Caribbean soul of Carnival and Where I Go (worthy of the first album), and the infectious Wonder (the If You Intend of this record).
The eight-minute, slow-motion, heart-on-the-sleeve I May Know The Word would have enchanted Tim Buckley: the singing first dwindles to a whisper amid the hypnotic tinkling of guitar and then soars brightly over a gospel organ. A performance of enormous class and profound sensitivity. The landscape of Tigerlily is still the small inferno in which Merchant has set all of her work: if the title referred to a latent aggressiveness in her fragile psyche, these lyrics hardly reveal it. The mournful, funeral-paced sadness of Seven Years in fact promises nothing good.
In this somewhat anachronistic genre of candlelit intimate confession, Merchant has few rivals today; and, if the future likely belongs to Jarboe and Lida Husik, this album represents one of the few moments in which tradition, with its most persuasive voice, manages to make us doubt (as O’Connor and Harvey certainly had not).

The solemn tone of her guttural contralto has already left its mark, even though few other singer-songwriters have dared to attempt her austere style. Whereas others aspire to a more or less wild “girl” image, Merchant becomes ever more adult and ever more tragic. Merchant thus joins the small circle of “serious” composers of the rock song: the title track of Ophelia (Elektra, 1998), dark and complex, seems like a more human version of Nico’s arcane dramas; My Skin consists of piano romances even more erudite than those of Joni Mitchell. At times (Frozen Charlotte, almost Chris Isaak-like, or Thick As Thieves, seven minutes) the flaw lies precisely in becoming too elaborate and pensive. Merchant’s music truly captivates when it manages to combine the domestic with the epic, both in lyrics and in music—whether soaring into the epic Life Is Sweet, accompanied by a string section that Grace Slick of Baron Von Tollbooth would have appreciated, or immersing herself in the tender, funereal gospel of King Of May, once again carried by moving waves of violins.
One has to wait for Kind And Generous to hear again her childlike humming and gentle scat over the characteristic soul-jazz pace. Break Your Heart unfolds into a light and melodious jazz-rock. The album benefits from meticulous orchestration (cello, organ, piano, French horn, trumpet, viola, violin), entrusted to the cream of New York session players.