Glowing "Empire Burlesque" review

Between Infidels and The Traveling Wilbury's Vol 1 (5 years), our Bob was a bit lost at times...

 

Silvio is far and away the stand out track on Down in the Groove, IMO, but between the Hunter-ish lyrics and GD backing vocals, it feels more Dead than Dylan.

 

Empire Burlesque was the last really good Dylan effort IMO, Mind blowing no but very solid...

 

Yes, but when you compare these strong songs to others' albums of the period, things that were considered good at the time and now are unlistenable, its worth it to skip through the filler for the cream. Whats the song with the children's choir on Knocked Out? I like that track as well. Beautifully done.

 

We just went over Red Sky as well here, another album with 1/2 great material on it, like REALLY strong songs, yet some filler.

Bob might have done better issuing one album every 2.5 year at most.

 

I think ''Empire Burlesque'' is a pretty weak Dylan album, i agree with Johnny 99 on ''Oh Mercy'', very strong album, probably in my top 5 Dylan albums right now.

 

I liked it when it came out, only listen to it once in a blue moon nowadays, but I've never grown to dislike it. Certainly, the songs from it sounded better when performed live on the tour with TP and the HBs as his backing band.

 

I like Empire, but I can think of AT LEAST four that have come since that, for me at least, completely blow it away:
-Time Out Of Mind
-"Love And Theft"
-Oh Mercy
-World Gone Wrong
...and there may be a few others. That said, strip away the ******** production and you have a very solid album. I would love to see an "Empire Burlesque Stripped" like they did with Double Fantasy.

 

Some good to great songs, lots of tight playing. The sound is a product of the times as others have said - he let them remix Street Legal, so I don't see why he wouldn't let somebody fix Empire Burlesque.

That being said, I think everything he's put out since Oh Mercy beat Empire but a large margin.

 

Almost everything. I don't think Under the Red Sky, Together Through Life or Christmas in the Heart beat Empire by a large margin (or even a small margin).

 

Knopfler brought something special to Infidels just like how Bob Dylan made sure to include special acoustic numbers on Empire Burlesque to bring the feel more down to earth. The latter is less a product of its times due to its connection to Dylan's acoustic guitar based earliest material. Amazing how big a deal people make about more modern production choices on only one or two tracks when the other traditionally produced rock or acoustic numbers dominate the album.

 

It was cool to hear that, so thanks for posting it.

However, I think the album version of this track is WAY better.

It's one of my fave Dylan tracks.

ccm

 

I've sat through the entire Empire Burlesque album beginning to end and enjoyed it very much. Bob's voice is still very strong. Better i think than it is on TOOM and anything else later than that.

I love Dylan but his voice started to go in the later 90s.

 

I love this album, "I'll Remember You" is one of the most beautiful songs I've heard.

 

Nothing at all wrong with the production either. The backing sounds amazing on this track!

 

For me Dylan's last masterpiece was Blood on the Tracks, sure there where some really fine record's after, but not on that level. As far as live goes I missed the greatest years. My first show's where Rolling Thunder and I hit a ton of show's until the mid 90's and I was going out of habit because to me BD sounded awful, the bands where hot but (to me) not Dylan. The last show that blew me away was The Bridge solo show. When I am not enjoying it I stop, so others can have my seat and groove. I know people that still go and complain, so why go.

 

Um, no one recorded an album on "that level" before him, and no one recorded one after him either. The burden of making the greatest album of all time. They'll make the greatest TV commercials of all time too, I'm sure.

 

Back in the 80's when my Dylan collection was not only complete but the albums were "current", I had a hard time with "Empire Burlesque", mainly due to the terrible production. However I read a book called "Just A Personal Tendency" by Dave Percival wherein the author claimed it was Dylan's BEST album of all time! However difficult this might be to swallow, the case put forward was at the time extremely convincing and well thought through. EB is without doubt my most listened to album of all time that I have never actually fully liked! Never have I been more convinced to overlook an albums weaknesses in order to see the strengths, than this one. The book was supplemented by "Some Other Personal Tendencies" which is a collection of reviews of EB by professional writers, critics and music journalists from all over the globe. A lot of the reviews were heaping ecstatic praise on this record and saying it was Dylan's best album since the mid-60's, yes even better than BOTT, I kid you not! If you read the entire collection with Dave's book I guarantee you EB will become your favourite Dylan album too!

I always thought it was better than Infidels which is one of Dylan's albums that seems to split fans down the middle with those liking it typically stating it is one of Dylan's all-time best efforts, while the rest of us were left cold by the whole released version.

Where are you now, Dave? I'd love to know what you think of EB today and if it is still your favourite? I do think it is considerably better than its lousy reputation suggests and unlike Infidels it is regularly overlooked. Do I like it though? Not really. Dylan has done better, much better, and especially since 1997.

 

I had to refresh my memory as the songs from Infidels and Empire Burlesque get kinda mixed up in my mind. Just looked at the track listings on wiki and find I give the nod to EB. Possibly because I saw Dylan with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers right after that (at The Budokan).

Side note: I changed the sorting function at the google search bar to "oldest first" (for Dylan discography) and noticed Shot of Love was missing! And thought to myself, "thank god". I liked Saved and hated SofL so it makes for a better, revisionist discography.

 

I've always really liked this album and still play the record.

 

You must be among the chosen few then! Clearly a lot of people can't connect to this album, myself included. Lord knows, how I tried but after 30 years I know it's time to give it up.

 

It's one of my least favorite Bob Dylan albums. Not a great collection of songs and bad 80's production...........I can't get past the techno "When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky."

I agree though that "Dark Eyes" is a great song.

 

I like the album, prefer the original tracks before Arthur Baker embellished them-although I think his work on Tight Connection was effective and the song should have been a hit single. I far prefer the Steve Van Zandt/Roy Bittan version of When The Night Comes Fallling...to the EB take, the melody and vocal are much stronger.
The album may fall well short of his best but compare it to most other artists work from that era and it holds up really well.

 

Total meh!

It was a couple of decent songs and a bunch of bad ones all ruined by Arthur Baker's noise machine.

 

In Britain, this album seemed to have no publicity whatsoever. I first saw it in the racks - there'd been no announcement that it was imminent, or that Dylan had been preparing a new album.

When I heard it, I didn't think much: alarming, attention-getting production values disguising what I felt to be sub-par songwriting. I hadn't liked Infidels that much but this was a few steps down from that, even.

I still don't own a copy: it was around about this time that I decided Bob had, if not lost it, then definitely 'mislaid' it. He was to get it back (and lose it again) several times over the following years. Ralph J. Gleason was obviously on too something all those years ago....