Bob Dylan – ‘Oh Mercy’
Hailed as the voice of his generation, Bob Dylan spent decades struggling with the world’s perception of him. By the mid-1960s, he was already regarded as a musical messiah – a modern prophet who had successfully distilled the existential anxieties of the day and offered listeners an antidote. He subverted the Dylan myth time and time again, surprising fans with a string of born-again albums in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Perplexed by the fluctuating quality of these releases, Dylan’s fans began to realise that trying to predict the musician’s next move was a waste of time. All they could do was wait and hope for a comeback. After Knocked out Loaded and Down in the Groove, they could easily have given up hope. Then came Oh Mercy.
Bob Dylan had always embraced imperfections, with albums like Blonde on Blonde feasting upon such accidents and mishaps. But by the time Oh Mercy came along, Dylan’s carefree approach to studio recording was beginning to seem out of step. Having written the bulk of Oh Mercy from the comfort of his Malibu home, he recorded a version of the album with Ronnie Wood but was unhappy with the results. And so, in the spring of 1988, having resolved to start the album from scratch, Dylan was put in touch with Daniel Lanois. The producer’s influence is apparent from the off. ‘Living in A Material World’, an otherwise cliche-ridden attempt at political commentary, benefits from a broad stereo mix bejewelled with dust-bowl guitars and underpinned by a pulsating rhythm section.
That opening track introduces us to one half of a dichotomy present throughout Oh Mercy. In tracks like ‘Living in A Material World’ and ‘Everything Is Broken’, Dylan attempts to live up to his image. In both cases, he interrogates the political landscapes and finds a nation where faith has little meaning, humans have no value, and politicians cannot be trusted. “Broken hands on broken ploughs,” he sings in ‘Everything is Broken’, “Broken treaties, broken vows / Broken pipes, broken tools / People bending broken rules.” Such analyses are contrasted by tracks like ‘Ring Them Bells’, an ornate exploration of man’s righteousness, and ‘What Good Am I?’ In the latter, Dylan seems to question his role as a songwriter, reflecting on whether it’s better to concentrate on one’s inner life or confront the world’s injustices. “What good am I…” he sings, “If I shut myself so I can’t hear you cry?”
Oh Mercy is at its best when it isn’t trying to be anything. In ‘Man in The Long Black Coat’, Dylan removes himself completely, leaving us to navigate Lanois’ habitable sonic landscape. Like all the tracks on Oh Mercy, ‘Long Black Coat’ was recorded at night and carries a distinctly nocturnal atmosphere. Above a sea of singing cicadas, threads of acoustic guitar drenched in long-tailed delay bounce across the stereo field. We are invited to bask in a moment of bliss, and it’s only when we’ve lost ourselves completely that Dylan returns home with a dark tale to tell. That same atmosphere returns with the brilliant ‘What Was It You Wanted’, an erotic thriller concealed within an Ennio Morricone soundtrack.
We end with the far less moody ‘Shooting Star’, where again we hear touches of glimmering Omnichord -played wonderfully by Daniel Lanois. It is these small details that make Oh Mercy Shine. While Dylan is continually concerned with how he’s coming across, it’s the music behind him that feels the most characterful. And so Oh Mercy fades out to the sound of Dylan’s harmonica, that undying symbol of his past, present and future.