Under the Red Sky
| Bob Dylan
Under the Red Sky
Under the Red Sky is the 27th studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on September 10, 1990 by Columbia Records. The album was largely greeted as a strange and disappointing follow-up to 1989's critically acclaimed Oh Mercy. Most of the criticism was directed at the slick sound of pop producer Don Was, as well as a handful of tracks that seem rooted in children's nursery rhymes. It is a rarity in Dylan's catalog for its inclusion of celebrity cameos by Jimmie Vaughan, Slash, Elton John, George Harrison, David Crosby, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Bruce Hornsby.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Rolling Stone
October 4, 1990. Old masters sometimes pare their statements down stylistically to attain the mythic or universal — their work gets simpler, easier. Under the Red Sky, certainly, is Dylan taking it easy. Sad to say, he’s taking it far too easy.
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Ultimate Classic Rock
September 11, 2015. After rebounding with the critical and commercial triumph of Oh Mercy in 1989, he returned less than a year later with his follow-up effort, Under the Red Sky — a confounding curveball that left many people confused and disappointed.. . . . 'Under the Red Sky' ranks as one of Dylan's most bizarre outings, an album that skirts the line between a pop LP and a children's record.
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All Music
. . . Under the Red Sky is certainly lightweight, but rather appealing in its own lack of substance, since Dylan has never made a record so breezy, apart from (maybe) Down in the Groove. That doesn't make it a great, or even good, record, but it does have its own charms that will be worth searching out for Dylanphiles.
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Countdown Kid
July 10, 2013. While it is by no means the utter disaster that many critics made it out to be (nor is it the sneaky masterpiece some contrarians posit), Bob Dylan’s 1990 album Under The Red Sky is pretty much devoid of anything resembling a classic track.
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The Current
September 11, 2017. . . . I came to appreciate this album as a guilty pleasure, or maybe there genuinely is a case to be made for the elegant title track and the surly fun Dylan has with “Unbelievable” and “Cat’s in the Well.” Dylan himself seems to be a defender of this material too: tracks from the album routinely show up in his set lists.
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Warehouse Eyes
Apart from the two really bad tracks that were buried in the middle, and the opening "Wiggle Wiggle" the album stands up pretty well (I say this knowing that a lot of people really hate it).
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Guitar Player
August 13, 2012. I found this to be an interesting album in that the lyrics are nonsensical (including nursery rhymes, in some areas, critics charged), and there isn't one defining song, yet it still satisfies.
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George Starostin
March 11, 2014. The dedication explains it all: Under The Red Sky is nothing but Robert Zimmerman's idea of a «children's record», designed and executed through the vision frame of Bob Dylan. . . . Under The Red Sky knows exactly what it is doing, with one exception: as a «writer for kids», Dylan is not particularly well experienced, and the «fun» component of the album seems underdone.
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The Young Folks
February 5, 2015. All in all, Under the Red Sky isn’t as bad as critics made it out to be, but it’s certainly not his deepest work.
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Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews
It's hard to believe that a certified lyrical genius could produce such an appallingly bad collection; maybe he was punishing us for buying the Wilburys record.
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Off The Tracks
September 7, 2015. So, I know that this album is often laughed at, and mostly ignored. But I think there’s some great playing on it and some of the songs – to me – really work. Especially if you ignore the lyrics (not normally what you do with Dylan, I know). It’s been nearly a favourite even; perhaps because I know I’m almost out there on my own in terms of any interest in it
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Mark's Record Reviews
By the time the second half of the CD rolls around, it's clear that Bob has nothing new to contribute to the world, either musically or lyrically. Nor does his son, I assure you.
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Robert Christgau
Aiming frankly for the evocative, the fabulistic, the biblical, Dylan exploits narrative metaphor as an adaptive mechanism that allows him to inhabit a "mature" pessimism he knows isn't the meaning of life.
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Entertainment
But Dylan’s lyrics were mostly like nursery rhymes, sung with no apparent attention.
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The Daily Beast
The result: too much of absolutely nothing. Dylan himself has admitted as much.
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Adrian's Album Reviews
There's a nice accordion mixed in here, but sonically, 'Under The Red Sky' as a whole sounds rather anemic. It just doesn't impress on that level. Perhaps 'Under The Red Sky' is Dylan writing pop songs of a kind, dumbing down, trying to find space artistically?
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John McFerrin Music Reviews
In the end, though, this isn't an album where the songs are worth seriously dissecting. Some are better (like the closing "Cat's in the Well," with some neat guitar work), some are worse ("Handy Dandy," with its gratuitous stealing of the "Like a Rolling Stone" organ line), but it's all basically ok. In the end, it gets a 6, but in a good way - Dylan has made worse.
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