From "Ripsawnews.com" in Duluth Minnesota, by writer Timothy L. Fischer.

While his cohorts are busy with medical procedures and hunting down beautiful community college dropouts with movie of the week dreams of Ford Explorers and alimony, Barry Thomas Goldberg is still making albums. While he will never address the senate, model tight underwear or play stadium tours named after carbonated beverages, Goldberg still writes music and releases records at an ungodly old age for an unknown performer. If his most recent album, Empire Moon, is any indication of his talent, Goldberg writes pretty damn good music despite his chronological handicap and its popularity repercussions.

Using the cold streets and unfortunate, yet interesting, derelicts of Minneapolis as his subject and setting, Goldberg's fourth album--his first in more than 16 years--is a collection of well-crafted music guided by insightful lyrics. The title track opens the album with deep prose dropped with such a unique voice you double check the cover to verify that it is, in fact, not Leonard Cohen. Well, actually it sounds like Leonard Cohen if Cohen were to join forces with an organ and accordion player and tear up a local bat mitzvah like a bad rap video. This dark folk appeal continues throughout the course of this project. "The Ballad of John Berryman" reminds the listener of late '70's Dylan, and "Washington Avenue", the closer, closely

resembles Woody Guthrie. Goldberg recites the broken dreams of no charge hookers, drunks and smack addicts--all the while presenting such a soothing quality that its content could just as well be about bluebirds and sunflowers.
The finest parts of Empire Moon, however, are the selections in which Goldberg turns it up and kicks ass like a misunderstood grade-schooler. "Don't Target Me", "Dangerous World" and "Redemption" give birth to the image that he may actually be Eddie Vedder's fifth cousin's grandpa. Logical, dark and bitter describes this side of Goldberg. His finest moments come on "Antarctica" and "You're Killing Me", where the obvious influence of the Ramones transcends with the latent backbone of

methodic and cryptic flavor only comparable to that of Blue Oyster Cult. In other words, a fusion such as this is a pretty fucking cool idea, to say the least.
While his contemporaries will soon be paying attention to Wilfred Brimley's tasteless advertisements and joining gated communities in rural Arizona like gay teenagers join the Boy Scouts, Barry Thomas Goldberg will still be making music. It may not be a fast process, but page by page, and note by note, he will get it done. It took him 16 years this time and, truth be told, there are far worse Dylan, Cash and Neil Young albums to be bought.

the songwriting craft, eventually leading to his masterful and gritty second solo output, Empire Moon.
Goldberg has a raspy delivery that's strangely soothing, akin to enthusiastically shaking hands with someone who has worked in manual labor his whole life and is damn proud of it. His prose is eerily haunting, drawing comparisons mostly to the mournful earthiness of Leonard Cohen circa the "Natural Born Killers" soundtrack. The accompanying music, credited to ex-Ironweeds bandmate Gary Paulak, serves capably as it does so often in most gifted singer-songwriter situations, as a some-

In Goldberg's wonderfully dreary world, suicide jumpers ballroom dance with right-wing columnists while cluster bombs burst overhead. His style is so cinematic, in fact, that it has lent itself to soundtracks to two independent films produced by ex-band mates, Flutterblast and Mystagogos.
Goldberg's twisted vision of our fair city is both hopeless and magical, Minneapolis seen through a beer stein. Lucky us that he ended up in a recording booth instead of another obnoxious muscle car, just another schmuck chasing nameless floozies and sporting a tacky earring.