“Well, hey,” sang 10,000 Maniacs frontperson Mary Ramsey Sunday night at Bull Run Restaurant in Shirley, “give 'em what they want.”

The song — “Candy Everybody Wants” — was a fitting opening number for the acclaimed alt.-rock band's two-hour concert which started out a little rocky and ended with two standing ovations. The audience was clearly there to hear the band's biggest hits from the '80s, almost all of which were originally sung by the band's most iconic lead singer, Natalie Merchant. Indeed, even though Merchant departed in 1993, and Ramsey has fronted the band much of the time since, and it shows: She has a comfortable, confident energy, but there was a strange friction on stage at the start of the show, which seemed by a technical issue.

“Candy Everybody Wants” was solid and enjoyable, but it felt off, and it was followed by a prolonged need to stall while something was adjusted. Ramsey filled the space with a violin solo of an Irish reel, which was actually spectacular, instantly provoking the audience into clapping and stomping.

Whatever was going wrong on stage seemed resolved, and the band launched into its classic “Like the Weather,” to much audience appreciation. The band — the current lineup comprises Ramsey, keyboardist Dennis Drew, bassist Steve Gustafson, drummer Jerry Augustyniak and guitarists John Lombardo and Jeff Erickson — finally hit its stride and cruised into an easy jam, transitioning effortlessly into the hit “Trouble Me.” A couple of songs later, as heavy drums rolled into the child-abuse portrait “What's the Matter Here,” Ramsey's violin lines meshed with the guitar and bass to create a fresh, vibrant take on what's arguably the band's best-known song.

Ramsey's voice is, in a lot of ways, similar to Merchant's, and they both have remarkable ranges and can create startling displays of vocal dynamics. Moreover, for most of the best-known numbers, Ramsey is duplicating the song's original phrasing. It's entirely possible, at this point, that at least some of the audience had no idea that this wasn't the lineup they remembered from the 1987 album, “In My Tribe.”

Either way, they didn't seem to care. They swayed and sang along with lines such as “I've heard the excuses/everybody uses/he's your kid/I'll stay/out of it,” which is a little disturbing actually, considering the song's subject matter, but it didn't matter. For most of the audience, that moment was about capturing a spark of nostalgia.

It's at this point, though, that you have to ask just what this band actually is: Is it in reality a 10,000 Maniacs cover band, serving fans favorites from their youths, or is it something else entirely? The band's well-known songbook gives the musicians fairly well-defined lines to color inside, but there are moments — many of them revolving around Ramsey's violin — that feel as though they're on the verge of breaking free of those constraints.

What's key here is that while the music on stage often felt practiced, it never felt stale. Moving into the moody, haunting “The Painted Desert” demonstrated just how talented these musicians are, as did the exquisitely beautiful “Cherry Tree,” with its keyboard-driven melody.

Gustafson took over the lead vocals for the war parable “Gun Shy,” with Ramsey stepping back into backing vocals, and the switch-up worked. Gustafson's voice is a lot rougher than Ramsey's, and lent the song an earthiness that countered her more ethereal backing. Ramsey then took a break from the stage as the band launched into the New Wave jam, “Pit Viper,” with Lombardo handling vocals. The absence of Ramsey as a focal point created an entirely different energy, which was both welcome and illuminating. The vibe was more loose and freewheeling, and well-illustrated how talented these performers are. It also shook off a bit of the feeling that the audience was only seeking museum pieces.

By the time Ramsey returned to the stage, the audience had loosened up, and while the show was still leaning heavily on the band's catalog, there was a profound shift in the perspective, a sense that the audience was now watching the show in the moment, not as a retrospective.

But the real telling moment came on a performance of the Irish traditional “She Moved Through the Fair.” There was a freedom in the performance that seemed to transcend much of what had earlier transpired. Indeed, in a lot of ways, it was as if the musicians became the band they were, not the band the audience wanted them to be. A lot of this was also evident on the traditional reel “Lady Mary Ramsey,” a song Ramsey says she discovered while Googling her name.

By this point, the audience was entirely in her hands, and offbeat offerings such as a lighthearted cover of “Love is in the Air,” the theme song to “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” and band staples such as “Because the Night” (a Patti Smith Group song that 10,000 Maniacs popularized) and “Hey Jack Kerouac” hit with a resounding force, bringing the audience to its feet for a vigorous ovation.

The band returned to the stage for an encore, performing a cover of the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” and the 10,000 Maniacs hit “These Are the Days,” a fitting closure to a night driven by nostalgia, even as the band proved that it’s much more than just the hits it had 30 years ago.

Email Victor D. Infante at Victor.Infante@Telegram.com and follow him on Twitter @ocvictor.