BOB DYLAN: OH MERCY (1989)
1) Political World; 2) Where
Teardrops Fall; 3) Everything Is Broken; 4) Ring Them Bells; 5) Man In The Long
Black Coat; 6) Most Of The Time; 7) What Good Am I; 8) Disease Of Conceit; 9)
What Was It You Wanted; 10) Shooting Star.
This album shared pretty much the same fate as
the Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels,
released the same year — when they came out, both seemed like such a breath of
fresh air after several disappointments in a row that the critical world went
a-droolin'. Later on, as time went by, the Eighties started fading out of
sight, and albums such as Voodoo Lounge
and Time Out Of Mind began (quite
justifiedly) eclipsing their predecessors in terms of depth, melodicity,
production, and general adequacy, the 1989 «comebacks» gradually came to be
regarded as little more than tepid half-steps on the way to a genuine recovery.
For Dylan especially, the shadow of Time,
universally hailed as his undisputed «late period masterpiece», has plunged Oh Mercy into nearly complete
obscurity: at the very least, few people remember any individual songs as «classics».
But I feel kinda sorry about all this. First of
all, Oh Mercy definitely was a comeback album, much more so than Steel Wheels — the latter was more of a
«formal» comeback, announcing that the Stones have patched up their differences
and got together after a two-year break, but it did not exactly show us a band
that was getting back on the right track, since they'd never really left it. Oh Mercy, on the other hand, did give
us back our Dylan — after six years of confusion, total uncertainty of where he
actually belonged in this new world, occasional gross embarrassments the likes
of which he'd never fallen prey to before (such as the disco production of
ʽWhen The Night...ʼ), this was the first album where he at least seemed to be back in control, knowing what exactly he was
doing and why he was doing it.
Clearly, this could not have happened without
falling upon the proper producer — Daniel Lanois, who is responsible for the
resuscitation of Bob's late-period career as much as Tom Wilson was responsible
for Bob's early sound. It was Lanois who truly introduced Dylan to the good possibilities of the new
technological era, showing that the new production standards were not limited
to a simple reliance on electronic drums and atmospheric synthesizer backdrops.
Instead, you could take real musicians and mix their parts in such a way that
would emphasize, colorize, and maybe even «mystify» them, without any dehumanization
involved. All of a sudden, the music behind the words began to matter once
again, and this, in turn, revitalized the words: after the «anything-goes»
approach of Knocked Out Loaded and Down In The Groove, we are suddenly back
to a world where words, chords, and moods form a meaningful unity. It's not an
artistic paradise, but it is a
meaningful unity.
Not a particularly uplifting or optimistic
unity, mind you: Oh Mercy opens
another period of utter bleakness for Bob, not nearly as deeply personalized as
it was on Street Legal, but nowhere
near as formulaically Christianized as on Slow
Train Coming, either. Renewed interest in making music here corresponds to
a renewed feel of disgust for just about everything in sight, be it politics,
social relations, personal relations, or even himself. Small wonder that the
lead (and only) single from the album was ʽEverything Is Brokenʼ, a song whose
lyrics probably did not take more than five minutes to write, as they mostly
just list everything that is broken, but whose mood is quite typical of the
album — and also reflects Lanois' deep understanding of what sort of sound goes
best with these words, as he punctuates each bar with a «breaking» guitar
chord. And it is not a deadly depressed song, either: it's got an angry,
punkish overtone to it, not coincidentally opening with a rhythm pattern taken
directly from ʽBrand New Cadillacʼ.
Grim acoustic riffs, steel guitar stings, and
electric howls in the background actually welcome us from the very beginning —
this ain't the Traveling Wilburys, folks: this is a ʽPolitical Worldʼ, where
paranoid musical sounds are the norm and "you can travel anywhere and hang
yourself there / You always got more than enough rope". Together with
ʽEverything Is Brokenʼ, these two songs, clumsily and falsely separated by the
less interesting country waltz ʽWhere Teardrops Fallʼ, set the basic tone and
deliver the basic message of the whole record. Grim, morose, skeptical, but not
up to suicidal heights or anything.
Most of the songs that follow are, however,
slower, moodier, and folksier/bluesier in nature, marking the transition to a
much more retro-oriented sound and reflecting an increased interest in pre-war
music. A song like ʽMan In The Long Black Coatʼ, for instance, with the lyrics
properly adjusted to reflect the correct time period, could have come from
many an old folk singer, except that Lanois also adjusts it for atmosphere (such
as adding some cricket effects to go hand in hand with "crickets are chirpin',
the water is high", etc.), and puts a tinge of dark mystery all over the
place — if the lyrics themselves do not get you a-wonderin' who the "man
in the long black coat" that whisked away the protagonist really is, the
deep rumbling bass and the «crickets» just might. (Not that there's a lot of
wondering to be involved, but still, this is a relatively new twist in Dylan's
relations with the Devil, curious enough to have the song covered by an act as
unlikely as the reunited Emerson, Lake & Palmer several years later).
It is true, I suppose, that the actual
songwriting here is not phenomenal or anything. It'd been a long, long time
since Dylan was able to come up with brand new melodic ideas, and his failing
voice, now down to just a few miserable shades of color, can no longer grip the
listener with odd tone changes — while he still watches his phrasing quite carefully
(unlike his live shows), all the phrasing mostly consists of hoarse croaking.
But Oh Mercy goes for atmosphere,
not hooks. Yes, sometimes it feels like Bob is getting a bit out of focus, but
not on stuff like ʽWhat Was It You Wantedʼ, bitter, direct, and featuring some
really mean-blown harmonica, or ʽWhat Good Am Iʼ, one of the most self-critical
songs he ever wrote.
When the time comes to prune and filter your
collection, and weed out all the music that «does not really matter» and leave in
music that does, even an album like Empire
Burlesque, which has a lot of individual benefits going for it, might have
to go eventually — because its individual parts are greater than its cohesive
significance, misguided as the whole thing was. Oh Mercy, with its imaginative «deep dark forest»-style production
and deeply personal nature, is the opposite: separately, most of the songs are
lacking, but together, they form a realistic and credible picture of Bob the
artist at the time. You may not want to keep coming back to it any time soon,
but that would be no serious reason to deprive it of a thumbs up.
Check "Oh Mercy" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Oh Mercy" (MP3) on Amazon
For those who care about lyrics, "Most of the Time" is one of the greatest songs in Dylan's catalogue. The seamlessness of its mixture of straightforwardness and self-directed sarcasm is breathtaking.
ReplyDeleteSince we won't get to the Rolling Stones until about 2034 at this rate let me say that I don't think they ever really recovered after Sticky Fingers, not that they weren't still capable of the odd good cut and Tattoo You was a bit of a return to form but outside of these exceptions it was never really the same again.
ReplyDeleteGlad you've done justice to this work of art. Many reviewers complain about the muddy production which makes it sound more like a soundtrack to a "Twin Peaks" episode than a Dylan record. I have no problem with this, I have to disagree about the lack of creative melodies. How about "Ring them bells"? The sound and songs are very untypical for Dylan, no slow, monotonous 12-bar blues in sight. No female back-ups either (first time since "Blood on the tracks"). Sounds very intimate, very... otherworldly. "Time out of mind" explores similar vibe but takes it into darker, harsher places. Plus, he devotes an entire chapter of his book to the story behind the making of this record which rather proves it must have meant and still means something important to him. To "Down in the groove" he devotes none.
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