reviewing albums by bands whose previous work you've ignored entirely

flaming lips is an interesting one, because up until and including soft bulletin reviews of every album would be, like, "flaming lips have always had a maverick and wayward spirit, but with this *new album title* they have finally made an accessible record instead of a difficult". but when the next album came out, the reviews would say the same thing! the one they called 'finally accessible' suddenly is part of 'difficult back catalogue'!!

happened with mu-ziq for a while too

I've just bought The Argument by Fugazi while, to my knowledge, never having heard a second of their music. I have no idea what they actually sound like, although I have a fair idea what they're SUPPOSED to sound like.

I can review it for you if you like, just to use it as a control example.

I reviewed the recent Prefuse 73 EP while having only a general idea of what his stuff sounded like ("Warp-hop", to coin a term I thankfully did not use). I downloaded a few tracks from the Uprock Narratives CD, but I also figured this: Press kits help.

but the way i see it, because Prefuse is still a pretty new act you could probably get away with not knowing much about him or his previous work (seeing as there wasnt much of it anyway)...but with a band like the Lips who like Mercury Rev only started getting major attention after NME named em album of the year you would feel more compelled to check out their larger catalogue perhaps...

aren't merc rev all over the place ? ok latest album is quaint. i've read that life had been so hectic that several albums were u-turns, re-assessments, so read hype carefully and listen in store first

i mean good luck to them, but all the cover stories, big feature articles, isn't that major label money more than critique, and even if it isn't, they still get more major attention because of non-indie multi-national systems

and i can hear multi-national all over that newish album of theirs' -- oh it's the visconti sound is it ? well bowie was about as big an alternative as a major ever dared go, especially rca

mercury rev can't be bothered playing the south island of new zealand (i'm assuming they've made it to australia) -- they're rock stars now, new zealand isn't west timor, so i give a damn

Great question.

I'd argue that you should do as much research as your allotted time, energy and resources allow. You risk making a fool of yourself (and writing a useless review) missing the larger context of a band's music if you take one album in isolation from an available body of work. (On the other hand, if a record somehow needs a lot of context to be appreciated or enjoyed, that's certainly a kind of failure.)

I know the popular music business is driven by "what's new this week," but I think it's important how a new record stands up against an artist's previous work if you're making any kind of recommendation to readers.

Y'all can call bullshit on this one, but I also think bands like the Flaming Lips or Fugazi -- by virtue of longevity and quality (OK, the latter might be arguable) -- deserve more credit in approaching a critical take on their music than some band pushing their debut record a year after forming. Without research you end up in a sort of no-history vacuum that's pretty dangerous.

wl is partly right, but you can only really make a fool of yourself by pretending knowledge that you don't have. There was a newspaper TV critic here in England that did that often, making mistakes based on watching one show and generalising, often assuming certain characters or situations were regular instead of one-offs. Also, context is valuable, so any further info is useful. I wouldn't say that someone handed a Sun Ra album to review has to listen to everything else he recorded before writing about it, but listening to a previous album or two isn't exactly overdoing your research. And without reading any previous press you risk presenting a common opinion as some fresh idea of your own - and past reviews can be good things to react against! None of this is to say that you can't write a good review with zero previous knowledge, but I think you improve your chances by getting a bit more knowledge.

Here's one simple criterion: If you're going to talk about an artist's previous work, you need to listen to it. If not, then you don't.

Here's another suggestion: If you love someone's new album, buy the other ones. If you don't love it, and don't want to waste money, keep in mind that an artist's admirers (and plenty of other people) will take your opinion less seriously as a newcomer. Whatever you do, don't cover for ignorance by resorting to intellectual dishonesty. For instance, people who have spent more time than you with an artist's oevre are not, by definition, idiots or nerds.

One inevitable factor is that you aren't into some music simply because you haven't grappled with that genre or band before. I never loved Pavement, but I won't pan the new Stephen Malkmus (which I actually really like) until I've listened to all the Pavement records a lot and figured out why I don't give a shit.

i suppose it just comes down to whether you want to talk about the band's past work and compare the latest to one to them. i think you could write a good review of a record without referring at all to past work...perhaps you could make a point of refusing to compare ther album against its predecessors and this would add weight to the review maybe. if i was reviewing the new Underworld album i would be very tempted to include the line 'too similar to past work' and this would be a criticism but on its own terms 'A Hundred Days Off' is no worse than 'Beaucoup Fish' or 'Second Toughest In The Infants' and thats where this dilemma occurs...perhaps prompting a new thread: Should Bands go out of their way to make their next album different enough from the last one?