Natalie Merchant: Ophelia

Natalie Merchant was the face, voice, and mouthpiece of the oft-excellent, albeit oft-pretentious, 10,000 Maniacs. So it came as a bit of a surprise that 1) 10,000 Maniacs' post-Merchant album Love Among The Ruins was, tepid reviews and miserable sales notwithstanding, pretty good; and 2) Merchant's solo debut, 1995's Tigerlily, was a boring, plodding, tedious ego exercise. Now, that didn't stop the album from selling in the neighborhood of three million copies, nor did it soften fans' anticipation for her second boring, plodding, tedious ego exercise, Ophelia. Snail-paced and packed with predictable moralizing ("Don't disrespect yourself," "I tell you life is short," etc.), it's a real drag: "Kind & Generous" is the obvious single, in part because its "la-la-la" and "na-na-na"-intensive chorus is the closest Ophelia gets to pulling off an upbeat moment. Even on "Life Is Sweet," Merchant is quick to point out that life is sweet "in spite of the misery." The album isn't a total wash, however: "King Of May" benefits from a nice string arrangement—Ophelia is far more instrumentally ambitious than its predecessor, featuring fine guest work by Daniel Lanois and others—and the languorous "Frozen Charlotte" is head-and-shoulders above everything here, benefiting immeasurably from a beautiful guest vocal by The Innocence Mission's Karen Peris. (An encore performance by Peris, on Merchant's inoffensive cover of "When They Ring The Golden Bells," is less memorable.) Unfortunately, a few revelatory moments aside, Ophelia is oppressively joyless, and it gets tiresome fast.