Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (SACD) (1989/2019)
Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (SACD) (1989/2019)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+log+.cue) - 191 Mb | MP3 CBR 320 kbps - 90 Mb | Scans - 100 Mb | 00:39:00
Folk Rock | Label: Columbia Records, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+log+.cue) - 191 Mb | MP3 CBR 320 kbps - 90 Mb | Scans - 100 Mb | 00:39:00
Folk Rock | Label: Columbia Records, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab
Mastered on Mobile Fidelity's World-Renowned Mastering System and Strictly Limited to 3,000 Numbered Copies.Tracklist:
As soon as it was issued, Bob Dylan's Oh Mercy was rightly regarded as a striking return to form. The 1989 set also won acclaim for the singer's decision to pair with visionary producer Daniel Lanois, whose sonic guidance draws vivid colors, hues, and warmth from the songs – all the while adding significant ambience, effect, and context. Removed from the circumstances of its original release, Oh Mercy has managed to both justify and transcend such praise. As time wears on, the record only gets better, with its razor-sharp songwriting and atmospheric soundscapes escalating to legendary proportions via Mobile Fidelity's definitive digital reissue.
Mastered on Mobile Fidelity's world-renowned mastering system and strictly limited to 3,000 numbered copies, Oh Mercy now takes on cinematic qualities worthy of Lanois' production and Dylan's performances. On SACD, the music benefits from a spaciousness, tonality, and surrealism no prior edition delivers. Each note seems to occupy its own physical dimension, allowing Oh Mercy to simultaneously immerse and surround you. Its clarity, dynamics, and extension also reach new heights throughout – whether it's the low-end reach on the spiritual-minded "Ring Them Bells" or combination of guitar-chord treble and piano decay on "Disease of Conceit."
Achieving a cohesiveness and richness absent from Dylan's other 80s efforts, Oh Mercy further stands out for its on-the-floor immediacy and nuanced treatments. Gone are the slick, processed, "shoulder pad" synthetic backdrops Dylan employed on the preceding Empire Burlesque. Borrowing from approaches he used on U2's The Joshua Tree, Lanois serves rather than obscures Dylan's intent – enhancing the topicality of barbed fare like "Political World" and further charging the self-doubting emotions of quizzical compositions such as "What Good Am I?"
For all of Lanois' magic, it's impossible to overlook the brilliance of Dylan's lyrics – or timbre and commitment of his singing. Many tracks on Oh Mercy have become live staples and fan favorites, and for very good reason. The swampy, percussive-augmented "Everything Is Broken" finds Dylan at his most forthright and descriptive, with the metaphorical and direct account of estrangement, loss, and chaos applicable to any number of eras, situations, or regimes. Mystery, voodoo, and portent fill "Man in the Long Black Coat," appointed by Lanois with aptly spooky devices and designed by its architect to "make an attack on your most vulnerable spots."
Indeed, vulnerability peppers the second half of Oh Mercy, whether on the unrequited bite of "What Was It You Wanted" or the gentle, heartbreaking look-back ballad "Shooting Star." By extension, Dylan strips himself of any defense mechanisms on the romantic albeit somber "Most of the Time," which rates among the icon's moving creations and captures the memory-haunting aftermath of a dissolved relationship with a frankness, transparency, and self-knowingness few artists would dare commit to tape.
Conversations about how Oh Mercy compares to Dylan's classic 1960s output continue to this day and, if anything, have become deeper and more involved due to the record's still-growing strengths. That several outtakes – "Series of Dreams," "Dignity," and "Born in Time" among them – landed on subsequent Dylan records and are beloved by fans speak to Oh Mercy's lingering magnetism and power.
AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Oh Mercy was hailed as a comeback, not just because it had songs noticeably more meaningful than anything Bob Dylan had recently released, but because Daniel Lanois' production gave it cohesion. There was cohesion on Empire Burlesque, of course, but that cohesion was a little too slick, a little too commercial, whereas this record was filled with atmospheric, hazy production – a sound as arty as most assumed the songs to be. And Dylan followed suit, giving Lanois significant songs – palpably social works, love songs, and poems – that seemed to connect with his past. And, at the time, this production made it seem like the equivalent of his '60s records, meaning that its artiness was cutting edge, not portentous. Over the years, Oh Mercy hasn't aged particularly well, seeming as self-conscious as such other gauzy Lanois productions as So and The Joshua Tree, even though it makes more sense than the ersatz pizzazz of Burlesque. Still, the songs make Oh Mercy noteworthy; they find Dylan quietly raging against the materialism of President Reagan and accepting maturity, albeit with a slight reluctance. So, Oh Mercy is finally more interesting for what it tries to achieve than for what it actually does achieve. At its best, this is a collection of small, shining moments, with the best songs shining brighter than their production or the album's overall effect.
1. Political World (03:50)
2. Where Teardrops Fall (02:33)
3. Everything Is Broken (03:15)
4. Ring Them Bells (03:00)
5. Man In The Long Black Coat (04:32)
6. Most Of The Time (05:05)
7. What Good Am I? (04:45)
8. Disease Of Conceit (03:44)
9. What Was It You Wanted (05:03)
10 Shooting Star (03:13)
Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016
EAC extraction logfile from 4. June 2020, 18:36
Bob Dylan / Oh Mercy
Used drive : PLEXTOR DVDR PX-L890SA Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling : Appended to previous track
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "PERFORMER=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" %haslyrics%–tag-from-file=LYRICS="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%" -T "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -T "TOTALDISCS=%totalcds%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" %source% -o %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 3:48.30 | 0 | 17129
2 | 3:48.30 | 2:32.56 | 17130 | 28585
3 | 6:21.11 | 3:15.28 | 28586 | 43238
4 | 9:36.39 | 3:00.25 | 43239 | 56763
5 | 12:36.64 | 4:32.37 | 56764 | 77200
6 | 17:09.26 | 5:04.68 | 77201 | 100068
7 | 22:14.19 | 4:44.42 | 100069 | 121410
8 | 26:58.61 | 3:43.60 | 121411 | 138195
9 | 30:42.46 | 5:02.48 | 138196 | 160893
10 | 35:45.19 | 3:14.56 | 160894 | 175499
Track 1
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\01 Political World.wav
Pre-gap length 0:00:02.00
Peak level 93.2 %
Extraction speed 4.5 X
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC 3C070805
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [668E013B] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 2
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\02 Where Teardrops Fall.wav
Peak level 92.5 %
Extraction speed 5.2 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 13481288
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [288D8E26] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 3
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\03 Everything Is Broken.wav
Peak level 95.7 %
Extraction speed 5.8 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 94AFE783
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [5F16C058] (AR v2)
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Track 4
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\04 Ring Them Bells.wav
Peak level 76.7 %
Extraction speed 6.1 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC F4024F9B
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [9DE3E474] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 5
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\05 Man in the Long Black Coat.wav
Peak level 83.2 %
Extraction speed 7.0 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC C42ABAEA
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [D078705B] (AR v2)
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Track 6
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\06 Most of the Time.wav
Peak level 81.3 %
Extraction speed 7.6 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 62F51B61
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [22E31CBA] (AR v2)
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Track 7
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\07 What Good Am I.wav
Peak level 95.4 %
Extraction speed 8.0 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 9D6F83DA
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [75BF6AD1] (AR v2)
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Track 8
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\08 Disease of Conceit.wav
Peak level 83.8 %
Extraction speed 8.1 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 1BAB5F78
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [452086D9] (AR v2)
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Track 9
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\09 What Was It You Wanted.wav
Peak level 82.4 %
Extraction speed 8.9 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC B8DCBF98
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [7BAF4C5A] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 10
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\10 Shooting Star.wav
Peak level 79.9 %
Extraction speed 8.7 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC CE312FE1
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [CD442290] (AR v2)
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All tracks accurately ripped
No errors occurred
End of status report
==== Log checksum 2E2EEF0B75EDCADA6FF571927144FC8B191567421AF732421353EB48D6001E39 ====
EAC extraction logfile from 4. June 2020, 18:36
Bob Dylan / Oh Mercy
Used drive : PLEXTOR DVDR PX-L890SA Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling : Appended to previous track
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "PERFORMER=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" %haslyrics%–tag-from-file=LYRICS="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%" -T "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -T "TOTALDISCS=%totalcds%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" %source% -o %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 3:48.30 | 0 | 17129
2 | 3:48.30 | 2:32.56 | 17130 | 28585
3 | 6:21.11 | 3:15.28 | 28586 | 43238
4 | 9:36.39 | 3:00.25 | 43239 | 56763
5 | 12:36.64 | 4:32.37 | 56764 | 77200
6 | 17:09.26 | 5:04.68 | 77201 | 100068
7 | 22:14.19 | 4:44.42 | 100069 | 121410
8 | 26:58.61 | 3:43.60 | 121411 | 138195
9 | 30:42.46 | 5:02.48 | 138196 | 160893
10 | 35:45.19 | 3:14.56 | 160894 | 175499
Track 1
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\01 Political World.wav
Pre-gap length 0:00:02.00
Peak level 93.2 %
Extraction speed 4.5 X
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC 3C070805
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [668E013B] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 2
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\02 Where Teardrops Fall.wav
Peak level 92.5 %
Extraction speed 5.2 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 13481288
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [288D8E26] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 3
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\03 Everything Is Broken.wav
Peak level 95.7 %
Extraction speed 5.8 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 94AFE783
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [5F16C058] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 4
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\04 Ring Them Bells.wav
Peak level 76.7 %
Extraction speed 6.1 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC F4024F9B
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [9DE3E474] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 5
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\05 Man in the Long Black Coat.wav
Peak level 83.2 %
Extraction speed 7.0 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC C42ABAEA
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [D078705B] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 6
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\06 Most of the Time.wav
Peak level 81.3 %
Extraction speed 7.6 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 62F51B61
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [22E31CBA] (AR v2)
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Track 7
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\07 What Good Am I.wav
Peak level 95.4 %
Extraction speed 8.0 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 9D6F83DA
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [75BF6AD1] (AR v2)
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Track 8
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\08 Disease of Conceit.wav
Peak level 83.8 %
Extraction speed 8.1 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 1BAB5F78
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [452086D9] (AR v2)
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Track 9
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\09 What Was It You Wanted.wav
Peak level 82.4 %
Extraction speed 8.9 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC B8DCBF98
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [7BAF4C5A] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 10
Filename H:\AUDIO\MUSIC\1989. Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (MFSL UDSACD 2203, USA)\10 Shooting Star.wav
Peak level 79.9 %
Extraction speed 8.7 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC CE312FE1
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Accurately ripped (confidence 17) [CD442290] (AR v2)
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All tracks accurately ripped
No errors occurred
End of status report
==== Log checksum 2E2EEF0B75EDCADA6FF571927144FC8B191567421AF732421353EB48D6001E39 ====
Thanks to the Original ripper !