Just when I’d begun to keep my ears open for all the glowing eulogies that were sure to be showered upon the late Mr Dylan’s head, he undergoes a miraculous recovery and produces his finest album of the eighties. I realise that Oh Mercy doesn’t have much competition in that regard but, if I qualify the statement by saying it’s his best since Blood On The Tracks released fifteen years earlier and falls not far short of that pinnacle, I think that puts it into perspective.
Not since the days of Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde has Dylan sounded so comfortable fronting a fully fledged band. His voice has the same distinctive croak but sounds richer. Whether that is solely due to the skills of Daniel Lanois in the producer’s chair, I don’t know, but I’m certain a great deal of the credit can be laid at his door. The best songs on Oh Mercy compare favourably with anything in Dylan’s back catalogue. “Ring Them Bells”, “What Was It You Wanted”, “Man In The Long Black Coat” and “Most Of The Time” – a painful telling of not coping with lost love – are all excellent. But, in the end, it’s the negative side of Dylan that this album brings to the fore.
It would be 8 more years before his next great album, Time Out Of Mind, and his insistence in between on releasing second rate material can only be attributed to laziness or a complete disregard for his fans. —Ian
