Music as oatmeal

I'm sorry to be the bringer of bad news but modern music is shit. It's the time of year when television channels are full of those adverts for the new albums of the year's TOP BEAT COMBOS, presumably with a view to seeing thousands of units sold to prop up Christmas trees up and down the land. You know the ones:

JO WHILEY (V/O): Mercury Prize nominees Atomic Lightsabre's monumental new album The Electronic Confusion is out now, featuring the singles Poetry and Balloons...

VIDEO OF MONOTONE DIRGE

(V/O)... Intestate Death Race...

VIDEO OF MONOTONE DIRGE COMPLETELY IDENTICAL IN SOUND AND CONTENT

(V/O)... and the brilliant new single Biliary Tree

VIDEO OF THIRD INDISTINGUISHABLE SONG

I couldn't tell you for sure if I've heard any songs by any band from the last 15 years. They have all become one amorphous porridge of autotuning, neat perfection and identical sentiment. Whatever the genre, whatever the critical response, it's just cookie cutter. This is why I find myself turning increasingly to Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. For better or worse, whether you like it or hate it, there's no way you could not know whether you'd ever heard it or not.

There's not enough new things like that any more. Obviously, all the old stuff is still around too, which should be enough. But there's just this creeping feeling within me that it isn't.