Glowing "Empire Burlesque" review

I don't. It's one of Dylan's least tuneful outings and I could never understand the love people had for that song tacked on at the end. Even when I could listen to the album I always thought that song was an anti-climatic end after that thundering apocalyptic WTNCFFTS and the after burn of "Something's Burning, Baby".

 

I prefer (with revisionist hat on) to think that "Under The Red Sky" came before "Oh Mercy" and not afterwards. In this way it is easy to see a string of poor 80's albums followed by a much improved and more consistent (albeit fairly minor) 90's output. In other words, if those two albums trade places and you consider UTRS came out in 1989 and OM in 1990, Bob's output would be much improved and consistently better than the 80's up until whichever album of recent vintage you think it drops off again. For me, it's the Christmas album and everything since.

 

I like the tune and the words....it probably helps that it was the least affected by the production on the rest of the album...................and on the 1995 tour, Patti Smith came out to sing it with him (so I'm biased).

 

I never could see the Patti / Dylan thing.......... but the Patti / Morrison thing, most definitely!

 

Dylan refers to the song in Chronicles saying he decided the album needed a final track and it should be acoustic so he specifically wrote Dark Eyes as the album closer.

 

Good clip! Thanks for sharing. Can't believe that's already 20 years old. I'm getting old!

 

Geez...I really dislike Empire, but I've always thought that was the single best song on there.

(The lyrics are still a bit too evangelistic for my tastes, however.)

 

Thanks for posting the review but I have to say that I disagree with just about everything the guy wrote. And the writing itself bugged me too, lots of cliches and surface level hacky analysis.

I also vaguely remember EB having a good critical reputation for little while, same with Oh Mercy. 'Dylan is back!' - that kind of stuff. But I hear EB as a forumulaic & uninspired album that's good for a listen now and then but not much more than that. It doesn't resonate like the gospel years stuff or the "Zionist" Infidels. Oh, 80's music writers - do you get anything right?

 

Different strokes for different folks, as the saying goes. It would be a pretty boring world if we all liked the same things.