Live In Concert

Amazon.co.uk With just a pair of CDs--Tigerlily and Ophelia--in her solo-career arsenal, Natalie Merchant isn't an artist you'd expect to release a live album. Perhaps Merchant is fond of playing live, which shows throughout these 11 tracks, despite her relaxed, unflappable vocal delivery. The former 10,000 Maniacs frontwoman leads an amped "Wonder" and then coos into "San Andreas Fault"; the latter is expansive and dramatic, a direction Merchant is exploring that's alternately off-putting and charming. Merchant's version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" is even more philosophical and meditative. Add to that a languid take on Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush" and you have a full-scale portrait of Merchant's mindset. The ever-sombre music is limited in its emotional scope, but there are few performers in mainstream pop who excel more in that range. --Andrew Bartlett