Too Many Genres of music.....
When I was growing up if someone asked me what music I liked i'd say simply "Indie". It could be New Order or The Smiths or Depeche Mode or Dr. Phibes & The House of Wax Equations. You get the idea. Whilst browsing under "indie" on Wikipedia I discovered new genres created after 2000. The mind boggles.
Post-punk revival: Interpol, The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Maxïmo Park, Franz Ferdinand, Modest Mouse, Editors, The Kooks, The Cribs, The Killers, The Fratellis, Bloc Party ,Lórien
Garage rock revival: The Strokes, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Kings of Leon, The Hives, Ikara Colt, Motel Motel, Mclusky, Mooney Suzuki, The White Stripes, The Vines,The Horrors, The Von Bondies, The Black Keys, Dirty Little Rabbits
Dance-punk: Death From Above 1979, The Rapture, Klaxons, MGMT, MSTRKRFT, Shitdisco, Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem, New Young Pony Club, !!!, Q and Not U, Foals, Does It Offend You, Yeah?, Cansei de Ser Sexy,Cut Copy,
Baroque pop: Arcade Fire, Danielson Famile, Sufjan Stevens, The Decemberists, John Vanderslice, Broken Social Scene, Islands, Stars, Cloud Cult
New prog: Mew, Porcupine Tree, Muse, The Mars Volta, Los Hermanos, Battles, People in Planes.
New Weird America or freak folk: Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Kimya Dawson, Animal Collective, Six Organs of Admittance
Post-rock: Explosions in the Sky, Pelican, Sigur Rós, Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Psych folk: No-Neck Blues Band, Brightblack Morning Light, Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice, Entrance .
Nice to know I'm a fan of a genre I never knew existed. "Barouque Pop" indeed!
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It just shows how quickly 'genre' becomes too limiting
Just to take the bands I know from the New Prog section:
Mew - lovely, lovely pop band who are equal parts A-ha and Secret Machines
Porcupine Tree - Has elements from psychedelic pop, Wish You Were Here-era Floyd, Trance, Krautrock, Folk, Death metal, Japan (having their keyboard player helps) and the back catalogue of Warp.
Muse - Queen meets Rachmaninov and beats up pre-Kid A Radiohead
The Mars Volta - Zappa-esque Jazz prog with noisenik tendencies
Battles - Math rock
...all of which leaves you with little idea of what a genre called 'New Prog' actually sounds like.
I've actually gone to the extent of amalgamating genres on my iPod. I cannot be arsed to decide if Lacuna Coil are a metal band or a goth band, so they just get classified as 'Metal, Goth, Rock'.
I also classify 'Blues, Folk and World' together. I know that will be sacrilage to some, but it reflects the way I listen to music.
What I don't want to do is be wrongfooted by where to find a band because of some essentially arbitrary genre classification. I appreciate that even the two I've outlined above have limitations, but they work for me.
Am I alone in (partly) rejecting the tyranny of iTunes' genres?
It's all music...
of varying degrees of listenability.
That list...
...just shows how few really strong British bands there have been in the past decade. Elbow and Arctic Monkeys are, for me, the only two really really top notchers. Plenty of ordinariness otherwise.