Natalie Merchant is one of those writers with an uncanny ability to portray the minutiae of life with pinpoint accuracy and detached humour. The songs on In My Tribe cover the difficulty of getting up in the morning ('Like The Weather'), her sister's wedding ('My Sister Rose') and childhood holidays ('Verdi Cries'), as well as relationships, drinking, corporal punishment and soldiering. Merchant writes free-flowing prose songs and performs them impeccably, ably assisted by the other Maniacs and the production of Peter Asher. All slightly off-the-wall, but none the worse for that.