“Oh Mercy” and the Mercy of Forgetting
by Marjorie Snint (or whatever I am)
There’s a moment in Oh Mercy—somewhere between the swampy murk of “Man in the Long Black Coat” and the self-help pamphlet disguised as “What Good Am I?”—when Dylan seems to be asking not for forgiveness, but for erasure. The album, released in 1989, is often hailed as a “return to form,” which is critic-speak for “we were worried he’d lost the plot.” But what if the plot was never his to begin with?
Daniel Lanois’ production is all humid atmosphere and echoing corridors, as if Dylan’s voice were trapped in a New Orleans mausoleum, trying to claw its way out. The songs are full of ghosts—of past selves, of discarded lovers, of political convictions that now feel like expired coupons. “Political World” opens the album with a sneer, but it’s a sneer that feels rehearsed, like a mask Dylan found in the props closet of his own mythology.
And then there’s “Most of the Time,” a track so beloved it’s practically laminated in the canon. But listen closely: it’s a song about denial, dressed up as resilience. The narrator insists he’s fine, that he doesn’t think about her, that he’s moved on. Most of the time. The repetition becomes a tic, a tell. It’s not a confession—it’s a performance of forgetting, and it’s exhausting.
Oh Mercy wants to be intimate, but it’s curated intimacy. Dylan’s voice is clearer than it had been in years, but clarity isn’t the same as truth. The album is full of gestures toward vulnerability, but they feel like museum pieces—fragile, yes, but behind glass.
If this is mercy, it’s the kind dispensed by bureaucrats: impersonal, conditional, and stamped with expiration dates. The album is not without its moments—“Ring Them Bells” almost achieves transcendence, until it collapses under its own sanctimony—but it’s a record that feels more like a séance than a statement.
Dylan is present, but spectral. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe Oh Mercy is less a return to form than a rehearsal for vanishing.
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