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Live In Concert

Natalie Merchant

Elektra Records, 1999

REVIEW BY: Christopher Thelen

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 04/07/2000

Natalie Merchant unquestionably has an alluring vocal style.Just when you think you're not going to be sucked into listening toanother song featuring her - be it from her days fronting 10,000Maniacs or her solo career - eventually you find yourself halfwaythrough the song before you know what hit you.

After two successful solo efforts, Merchant decided to test thewaters of the stage with Live In Concert, a set recorded in June 1999 at the NeilSimon Theatre. And while Merchant continues to enchant on some ofthese tracks, the key word here is boredom. There is hardly anytime in the course of these 11 tracks where the energy level raiseshigh enough to pull the album out of the doldrums.

In one sense, I have to question why Merchant chose now to do alive disc. It's not often that you see an artist go out after onlytwo studio albums and try to fill a live set. With the inclusion ofcovers of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and Neil Young's "After TheGold Rush," one can immediately see the danger of going out withoutenough original material. (In all fairness, these two covers areexcellent efforts.)

But Merchant shows that she can pull at the heartstrings of thelistener with amazing agility. Take the track "Beloved Wife," asong lamenting the loss of one's partner after 50 years ofmarriage. (I remember my grandfather being lost after mygrandmother's death, so I can easily understand the emotions thatMerchant draws from here.) And the more I listened to it, the moreI liked "The Gulf Of Araby" for the same reasons; Merchant is ableto take this song and spin a tale you can almost see acted outbefore your eyes.