release date: Jun. 17, 1997
format: digital
[album rate: 2 / 5] [2,18]
Track highlights: 1. "Rainy Day" - 7. "More Than This" - 11. "Shining Light"
6th studio album by 10,000 Maniacs and the first album to feature the new vocalist, Mary Ramsey, and back in the band is guitarist and songwriter John Lombardo, which makes the band a sextet once again. The style has changed to be less jangle pop, less mainstream pop / rock, and with more stress on traditional folk, and what's more devastating is that the great songs simply are absent. Nathalie Merchant almost wrote all lyrics for the band and now that part is left to the band as such, and although, Ramsey is no bad singer, she simply doesn't have a voice to substitute Merchant, and a cover version "More Than This" of a song by Roxy Music (written by Bryan Ferry) doesn't even come close to the magic of the original song. This is perhaps the band's least interesting album to date, imho.
With this, I lost interest in the band, who by no means was left without an audience. I think, many of the original fans welcomed the return of Lombardo - the band's original guitarist and songwriter - and with him, a return to a more traditional folk sound. Shortly after this, guitarist Robert Buck took a year off from the band to focus on another musical project, but he returned again in '99, however he died from liver failure in Dec. 2000, which almost buried the whole band.
[ allmusic.com 2 / 5, Rolling Stone 2,5 / 5 stars ]
