 Bob Dylan Whenever Sony gets around to overhauling Bob Dylan's considerable catalog, I will undoubtedly buy every single disc they put out. Is that because I love Dylan so much? No, I just love reissues that much, beautiful clear jewel case, "restored liner notes" and all … though I am always interested in Dylan regardless. Not many of his albums are among my true favorites; I almost never put him on mix discs; I don't tend to harangue party guests with his music. So my love of Dylan, while deep, is unconventional. I like Down in the Groove fifty times more than Bringing it All Back Home. What interests me most about Dylan is that he always seems so ambivalent about making albums, especially after like 1970 or so. It makes the albums pretty arbitrary, and therefore there's generally a lot to discover, not all of it good, but almost all of it interesting. Every five or ten years he'll come out with an album that everyone falls all over themselves to say is "his best since Blood on the Tracks" or lately, "his best in years." Oh Mercy was one of those albums. In 1989 it was one of my be-all, end-all classics. In 1995 I'd barely even ackowledge it. Now in the 2000s, I'm getting nostalgic the pendulum's swingin' back. Produced by Daniel Lanois, Oh Mercy has the same spare, swampy sound that makes Teatro by Willie Nelson so enjoyable and surprsing. It gets Dylan away from the slick session musician trap he'd settled into for several years prior. His voice fits Lanois's production style perfectly, his low rasp lending itself well to the reverby Mississippi Delta fantasia Lanois creates as a bed of sound. It helps that the songs are also really strong and "some of his best in years." "Most of the Time" is one of my favorite songs ever, possibly my favorite Dylan song of 'em all – actually a great "she's gone" type song that Chet Baker really could have sunk his teeth into, if he'd had any teeth. It's more or less a contemporary "I Get Along Without You Very Well," and with the ringing guitars and beneath-the-surface percussion bubbling about, it's a sonically cool song, which isn't what you usually get with a Dylan album. The melancholy mood of the album seems more direct and honest than a lot of his stuff – Dylan actually seems to be tapping into some genuine emotion and talking about relationships in many of these songs. "What Good Am I" is similarly rueful, quite amazing in a small way. "Shooting Star," which closes the album, is one of the only ones that uses mainly major chords, giving the disc some last-minute optimism. It sort of taps into the same vein that "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" and "Tangled Up in Blue" do, but without the layers of defensive imagery and attitude. Dylan seems more like a guy looking back on his life and writing from the heart – that's what makes Oh Mercy so special beyond it being "his best in years." The tracks I like least on here are the ones that usually get singled out as being great: "Political World," "Everything is Broken," and "The Disease of Conceit." These are all as direct as the rest of the material, but he's addressing generalities that seem kind of ridiculous. Like, yeah, it's about time someone took on the rampant problem of conceit. "We live in a political world." Profound. But all of these songs sound fantastic – "Politcial World" rollicks like nothing Dylan's done before or since. The bulk of the album is given to sad slow ones, not too far off from great Tom Waits stuff, with a dash of Johnny Cash. "Where Teardrops Fall," "Ring Them Bells," "What Was it You Wanted," "Man in the Long Black Coat" … great songs. Obviously I like this album a whole lot. I've listened to it tons of times, and putting it on recently after not listening to it in a number of years, I'm reminded of how good an album it really is. Maybe when it's reissued with "restored liner notes," I'll like it even better.
Review by Todd Rubber |