SUMMARY: RUNNING TIME: 4:11 Min.
This live 1993 performance of 10,000 Maniacs comes from their MTV Unplugged album recorded from the same-named cable TV series. Natalie Merchant was still the group’s lead vocalist at the time. The track leads with Merchant’s brief spoken intro, as if reading from a young woman’s mid-19th Century journal traveling across the American West.
REVIEW:
Including spot-on instrumentals, “Gold Rush Brides” offers a contemplative slice-of-life re: American pioneer women taking their own leap of faith as expectant mothers in the Old West. What brings the poignant subject matter to life is Natalie Merchant’s sympathetic, down-to-earth vocals. Poetically conveying this often-overlooked aspect of Old West history, she sounds very much in her creative element.
Through this song, Merchant elegantly helps one imagine sights and feelings experienced by these lonely young women traveling long days by caravan — clearly far from home, a supportive bond of sisterhood becomes imperative. This track further demonstrates the same kind of narrative magic Merchant infuses her subsequent 1995 solo album, Tigerlily, with. “Gold Rush Brides” proves an underrated gem worth re-discovery.
BRIAN’S ODD MOON RATING: 8 Stars
