If some bum shouted to you on the street “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet.” would it hold any weight? Probably not any more than the guy carrying the end is near sign. Luckily Shakespeare said it first almost 500 years ago, and we’re given a context in which to appreciate it. So how then can anything’s value be accurately assesed without first placing it into proper circumstances?
I see this problem most often in music reviews. Pitchfork ran a review yesterday essentially calling David Dondero a Bright Eyes rip-off. Who the hell is David Dondero you ask? David Dondero was warbling lo-fi before Omaha was a twinkle in indie rock eyes. Connor Oberst has always cited him as a huge influence, so it would make sense he’d later sign Dondero to his own label as a sort of please-don’t-sue-me homage. Is it really fair to assess Dondero’s album as irrelevant because Bright Eyes did it two years ago, when Bright Eyes has just been doing Dondero all along?
This isn’t really about David Dondero, though. If Nirvana’s Nevermind had just come out yesterday would anyone care? It would probably land in the used bins right next to all the Nickelback and Puddle of Mud albums, which is perhaps why Rolling Stone rescinded it’s four star rating to three. But Nevermind didn’t come out yesterday, it came out 14 years ago, refreshingly angry, while people were still rocking out to Milli Vanilli and NKOTB. When reviewing an album, it’s important to take into consideration two things; first, what does this album mean right now, and second, how does this album relate to the artists’ body of work, and similar work. For me, it’s all about relevance.
