Album Review: ‘Big Daddy’

*** 1/2

Mercury.

Half of “Big Daddy” is wonderful, and the other half is at least yeomanly. Not bad, all in all, for a rocker once rightly thought by many critics to be as flat and vacant as his native Indiana landscape.

The wonderful half revolves around a mid-life crisis of sorts, wherein Mellencamp looks inward and begins to question the cost of chasing one’s dreams. After living in single-minded pursuit of their goals and desires, the characters in songs such as “Big Daddy,” “To Live” and “Mansion in Heaven” find themselves confused and burdened with self-reproach. Mellencamp ultimately reaffirms his ideals, but it’s with the mature, chastened understanding that ideals pursued don’t mean happiness gained.

Elsewhere, Mellencamp gives us more populist manifestos, writing sympathetically about economic underdogs and small-town boys, as he has on his past few albums. While the songwriting is generally less sketchy than before, Mellencamp’s songs about desperate poverty and growin’ up remain deep in the shadow of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

Mellencamp’s band stands in nobody’s shadow. With its superb blend of acoustic and electric, rock and folk, nimbleness and clout, this is the state-of-the-art rock band for 1989.