10,000 Maniacs: MTV Unplugged : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Although its "Look, we're real musicians" gambit once seemed refreshing, the unplugged format now seems shopworn -- often it only certifies the wonders that Leo Fender and Les Paul worked. One would've thought that Chuck Berry demonstrated to everyone but Grandma that volume and electricity are integral to rock & roll and that killing the juice violates the aesthetic. But in the proper hands -- that is, the hands of those whose grasp of the folk idiom is surer than one gained with a week's rehearsals -- acoustic-only can still pay off.

With Natalie Merchant since gone solo, the 10,000 Maniacs set is a fine souvenir. Adding nine guest players (strings and woodwinds, primarily), the group sounds at least as sturdy as it did in the studio. The Maniacs reprise 14 typically tasteful numbers, including an elegant cover of Patti Smith-Bruce Springsteen's "Because the Night." Concentrating on "Our Time in Eden," one of their best albums, they flourish their gift for intricate texture -- and Merchant's voice is the essence of lilt.

Neil Young's "Unplugged" is also more confirmation than revelation; he's got nothing to prove as a folkie, and so simply stunning are songs like "Helpless" and "Harvest Moon" that in almost any version they'd dazzle. Setting "Like a Hurricane" to pump organ is daring (and it works), and the previously unreleased "Stringman" is a bonus, but the pleasures of this album lie in the familiar: Young's extraordinary voice (in a crystalline recording) and a glancing review of his staggering