On Friday, Mellencamp unveils his first album in five years. “Strictly a One-Eyed Jack” features a dozen songs packed with themes of mortality and dense lyrics, guided by the album’s protagonist, “a dangerous old man” (i.e., the one-eyed Jack, which Mellencamp will further explain). From the early days of Johnny Cougar – a name he says “was forced on me. and I don’t like anybody telling me what to do” – through '80s MTV staples (“Pink Houses,” “Hurts So Good,” “Small Town”) rootsy zigzags (“Paper in Fire,” “Get a Leg Up,” “Wild Night”) a shadowy musical written with Stephen King (“Ghost Brothers of Darkland County”) and voluminous accolades (the Songwriters Hall of Fame, ASCAP Founders Award and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are but a few), his accomplishments overwhelm.
Mellencamp’s is a rightfully celebrated career. Or, as it turns out, on the other end of the phone for an hour. Exactly the type who would make an ideal conversationalist over a few drinks. He’s calling from “on top of the mountain” in Northern California – not literally, but in his home – and for a guy often pegged as prickly, he’s immediately disarming. “If a squirrel chews through the line, we’re in trouble,” John Mellencamp says by way of introduction. “Gone So Soon” is an affecting detour into vintage torch-song piano balladry, the bruised tenderness in Mellencamp’s voice evoking Dylan’s take on the American Songbook.Watch Video: Diamond shines at Songwriters Hall of Fame The album’s centerpiece is the anthemic Springsteen duet “Wasted Days,” one more reminder that life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone, with Mellencamp’s and Springsteen’s voices merging into one empathetic croak. “Did You Say Such a Thing,” one of the three songs featuring Bruce Springsteen, takes a strong stand against gossip. “Chasing Rainbows” is musically elegant, evoking the Band at their warmest, but lyrically unsparing in its realism: “As you walk down streets of broken dreams/Some have lost everything/While others are still looking for that easy pot of gold,” he warns, with far more contempt than pity in his voice. The bracing country-rock tune “Lie to Me” lances into a world of fakes and cheaters, with obvious political overtones. Often on Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, he sounds like Dylan or Waits, with their trickstery absurdism replaced by a stark Midwestern earnestness. Now, Mellencamp has essentially become that guy. At 70, Mellencamp has seen enough: “Worries occupy my brain/I worry about tomorrow/I worry about today,” he sings over the front-porch blues stomp of “I Am a Man That Worries.” The music is just as serious, a rough yet refined version of the Americana rusticity that’s been a hallmark of his sound since back when he was positing himself as the hardheaded Indiana-roots rejoinder to MTV’s slick coastal elites - a dude who flipped the bird to the flashy excess of the Tawny Kitaen era by appearing on the cover of his 1987 album, The Lonesome Jubilee, sitting in a small-town bar next to a stone-faced farmer who looks like he’s been parked there since the Dust Bowl.
The grim honesty of the sentiment is striking, almost as striking as the forbiddingly rugged croak of his voice, which now approaches Bob Dylan and Tom Waits territory in its rangy, weathered gravitas. “We watch our lives just fade away,” John Mellencamp sings on Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, his 25th studio album.
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