Product Description

Track listing 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

Track Listing

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

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4526 in Music
• Released on: 2004-03-29
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
The 1980s was a particularly shifting, uncertain decade for Bob Dylan's creative voice but he capped it off with his first album of all-original material in several years and his best since Infidels. A lot of the credit for Oh Mercy's distinctive appeal has been given to producer-musician Daniel Lanois (who backs Dylan on all but one cut), and there's no denying the effect of his magnetic, fog-thick sound sculpturing here. Overlays of lap steel, dobro and mercy keys along with a slithering subterranean bass evoke a complete sonic climate, and the synergy between Lanois and Dylan would have a huge payoff with 1997's devastating Time Out of Mind. But however tightly produced, Oh Mercy also displays Dylan at the peak of his song-writing craft, fracturing words and phrases for the things-fall-apart jeremiads of "Political World" and "Everything Is Broken" and stringing images together for the noirish ballad "Man in the Long Black Coat". There's the usual dichotomy between Dylan's slashing accusatory mode ("What Was It You Wanted") and the self-effacement of "What Good Am I?" Aside from the miscalculated, sappy "Where Teardrops Fall" (the disc's sore thumb), this album has the classic staying power of Dylan's finest efforts. --Thomas May

Customer Reviews

Fair.
You can't avoid it - even Bob Dylan must admit, that after the heady second peak of Blood On The Tracks and the stellar follow-up Desire, things went downhill. Slow Train Coming deserves better than it gets, but the ensuing decade, the eighties was utterly wretched for Dylan - and his nineties weren't much better until 1997.

However, amidst all the Christian hoo-ha and bleating about writers' block, is Oh Mercy, a curiosity of an album, a diamond in the rough that was the eighties.

Regarded at the time as a return to form, Oh Mercy isn't quite on a par with, say, Highway 61 Revisited or the other Dylan classic albums, but it is certainly a fair work.

Fairly short for Dylan and with not nearly as much verbal complication as he was known for - one song is even called 'Political World,' which tells you plenty - the album, musically is very relaxing. Put together entirely at night, this is a record made in the twilight of the day, in the twilight of a man's life, to be listened to as such. The sparse arrangements feature delay-ridden harmonicas and twittering lead guitars, but nothing can smother Dylan's voice and above all his songs.

'Political World' is an opener, with a funny oompah-oompah rhythm and a fairly blatant lyric; it's enjoyable. 'What Was It You Wanted' sounds like a musical interpretation of a swamp, and when he utters the words 'what was it you wanted?/I'm not keeping score,' I almost guarantee a chill will go through you. Furthermore, 'Everything Is Broken' shows Dylan making the kind of knockabout blues that would lend his last studio album to date a great deal of charm.

Oh Mercy is too often overlooked. Not quite a classic, it is well worth several listens, and is a delightful record.

A real treat
An Dylan 80's album that wasn't a disaster, and better than anything we could have expected from his 80's recording morass. Hurrah !
It has brilliant production by Lanois and some truly wonderful Dylan tracks, "Shooting Star", "..Long Black Coat","Most of the Time", "..Broken..." and "..Bells.." would all make any sensible Best of Compilation of his last 25 years.
It could have been an a bona fida classic if "Dignity" and "Series of Dreams" had not inextricably been dropped.
Great singing, minimalist instrumentation, great melodies, great hook lines, moody and atmospheric. File between "Desire" and "Street Legal". A real treat.

A strong, dark, brooding album.
Dylan writes extensively about this album in his recent autobiography, and what he has to say about the recording of Oh Mercy makes me appreciate the album even more. The strongest songs are in the first half of the album, but unusually for Dylan there is not a poor song on the album. My favourite is Man In The Long Black Coat, with its haunting vocal sound and mysterious central figure. Overall, this is one of the best albums from the last 30 years of his career!