Natalie Merchant's personal new album

For Natalie Merchant, music serves a high purpose: It's spiritual, it's topical, it's functional. Her voice, from her youth in 10,000 Maniacs in the 1980s through her acclaimed solo albums, has always possessed a thoughtful seriousness of purpose, but also a sense of comfort and compassion. Her songs are focused and purposeful, too: character studies of people, often women, in crisis; contemplations of world events; troubled love songs. They're often bittersweet, mixing disillusionment and hope.

She recently released her first album of all-original material since 2001's Motherland, and she comes to Glenside's Keswick Theatre on Friday for her first tour in a decade with a full electric band.

Merchant has, of course, been active since Motherland: In 2003, she self-released The House Carpenter's Daughter, an album of folk songs; in 2010, she put out Leave Your Sleep, a double album of poems, in part geared to children, set to a wide-ranging spectrum of music, from New Orleans swing to full symphony orchestras. She also, in the interim, was married and divorced, and she had a daughter. She also continued her activist work on issues such as animal rights, domestic violence, and gas and oil fracking.

She called her new album simply Natalie Merchant, in part to make a distinction from the prior albums of adaptations, in part because the album ranges through such a variety of material that she couldn't decide on one apt title.

She wrote songs throughout those 13 years, and she had a stockpile of about 30, winnowed to 10 for this album. Some of the songs are topical: "Texas" attacks the entitlement of George W. Bush; "Go Down, Moses" is a gospel prayer set during Katrina. Some are global: "It's A-Coming" depicts the planet's ecological collapse, and "The End" concerns war refugees. Some are character studies: "Lulu" is about the actress Louise Brooks. Some are personal: "Seven Deadly Sins" addresses the end of a difficult relationship. The album is a time capsule of sorts.

"That's what albums are, except this album just encompasses a much wider stretch of time," says Merchant from a tour stop in New Jersey. "They were songs I was writing for about 15 years. While I was working on other projects or stepping away to have a family, I continued to write of my impressions of what was happening in the world and under my own roof and in my own head. . . . We had many traumatic events happen in the past 15 years: we as a planet, as a global community, have finally, I think, come to terms with the fact that we are disrupting the planet and the consequences are beginning to be recognized, which wasn't the case 15 years ago. And terrorist attacks and two wars and eight years of George Bush and on and on. The digital revolution has intensified, too, which has changed the way we communicate with each other."

The album mixes soulful pop, string-laden ballads, and gently swinging jazz. The arrangements are informed by her work with orchestras and a broad palette of styles on her last albums. Several songs went through several iterations and types of arrangements before she found the perfect one. In recording "The End," for instance, went through several arrangements before settling with a 12-piece string section. At the Keswick, her eight-piece band will include a string quartet.

The album's centerpiece is "Giving Up Everything," a Zen mantra about simplicity and transcendence. "Giving up everything, my hungry ghost of hopefulness," the song begins. Merchant wrote the song as a reminder to herself, and to others.

"It's not anything that I've been able to achieve, but it's definitely a goal on some level, to give up, to think about renunciation of attachments. I'm pretty attached, and it's a struggle. I'm attached to the way things are or want them to change. Or I'm attached to my vision of how I'd like things to change, or I'm attached to my despair that it will never change into what I want it to be," she says, with a wry laugh.

Merchant sees her songs working in the long tradition of social activism and importance, and she cites Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" as an inspiration. She remembers hearing Peter Gabriel's song "Biko" when she was in high school and going to the library to find out about Stephen Biko and learning about South African apartheid. She is proud that her songs, such as 10,000 Maniacs' "Hey, Jack Kerouac," or her solo songs like "Carnival," have done the same for listeners.

"I've had lots of people come to me over the years and say, 'I read Beat poetry and I read Kerouac and his novels because of your songs,' " Merchant says. "I have had many people say that I've broadened their worldview and made people think about being more compassionate or generous with themselves because of what I wrote. Or I comforted them. I think that, more than try to activate people sometimes, what I'm trying to do is just console them and say, 'I've witnessed this, too, I see it, too, I feel it, too.'

"What happens inside a person when they are moved by music is something eternal, from the first day that someone sang. What moves you in music is something magical and mysterious. I tried to make a record that honored that. I tried to give people something honest and true."

Natalie Merchant

8 p.m. Friday at the Keswick Theatre, 291 N. Keswick Ave., Glenside. Tickets: $42.50-$62.50. 215-572-7650, www.keswicktheatre.com.EndText