The world famous UK/USA music industry, which once glimmered as one of the brightest beacons of our culture, is disappearing. Just like every great bureaucratic empire it is becoming arrogant and languid. Some of the most important faculties of our musical culture have been lost.

Take the radio for example; independent radio used to be a decisive force in feeding new talent into the public ear. But try calling your local radio station and asking them to play a favourite song of yours; if it hasn’t already been on an unstoppable loop for the past week, then they will almost certainly say no. Maybe they will refuse to justify this, but they might just tell you that ‘we couldn’t play your music, even if we wanted to’. Today, play list selection is usually done by big media companies. Big business wants big money, and the big money is in the mainstream market, whose agenda is set by big business; it’s circular. And we, on the receiving end, are being told repeatedly what to like.

In times gone by, musicians and artists might justify radio airtime by selling well in record stores, or maybe just by creating a local buzz. There was a stronger sense of importance in buying records and going to gigs to support an artist on their path to success. The result was a meritocratic ascension; the people genuinely interested in music as a progressive art would fuel and guide the industry. The retrograde system of today means that money comes first, always. The radio in the United States, though it has improved, is in a state far worse than our own. Media giants like Clear Channel operate over 800 radio stations. Such companies have been accused of using market research programs which involve playing new music to random people from the street, in exchange for a tasty pizza treat, and asking them what they would do if they heard it on the radio. Answers such as ‘turn it down’, ‘change station’ or even ‘turn it up’ are considered negative, since they suggest that a listener is being made to think actively. The thinking listener is more likely to later change the radio station, resulting in lower ratings and consequential advertisement revenue loss for the company. The favourable response to a candidate song would be “do nothing”. Such blatant profiteering and lack of artistic integrity by such powerful media companies has been damaging to American music and consequentially our own.

The UK does tend to follow the US. Huge UK success was enjoyed, for example, by the Disney bubble: artificial acts like the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus. How do their simple songs manage to be so successful? It’s as if they’ve been manufactured to a template. Our mainstream popular music is getting plainer, and it’s partly been driven by the changes in how we listen. Music is talked about less in a critical sense, and it becomes easier for everyone to accept that what the charts tell us is popular, is the best music around.

But precious few of today’s ‘big acts’ are even close to rivalling the longevity of John Lennon and Freddie Mercury. We really need to assert considerable independence if we’re to explore the best music being produced today. The charts are becoming of decreasing significance to the enlightened; websites such as Pitchfork appear to be taking their place as the best music guides, offering sincere, intelligent recommendations. There are so many exciting new acts waiting in the wings that the mainstream music industry seems unwilling to gamble on.

The sense of artistic responsibility and integrity is fading, and the mainstream music industry is starting to be seen by many as an irresponsible money maker. The attitude seems increasingly to be that it’s hardly worth changing things too much, once we know ‘what sells’. We’re being sold the musical equivalent of Mr Whippy: it’s cheap, it’s everywhere, and it’s full of added sugar.

Take a quick listen to ‘Four Chords’ by The Axis of Awesome. It’s a parody of mainstream writing, and exposes 50 modern pop songs as all having exactly the same basic chord loop, including modern classics such as Paparazzi and Poker Face by Lady Gaga and MGMT’s Kids. It’s one of those things that maybe you didn’t want to know about, like finding out that the clouds on Mario were identical to the bushes in every aspect but colour. That’s how it is now.

The criterion of talent has diminished to the point of transparent superficiality. The major labels invest in sex, shunning musical brilliance. Young musicians clamour for the support of the Big 4 (Sony, EMI, Universal, Warner), but the few that may attain it are often hastily railroaded into writing music which ‘will sell’. Mr Hudson is a fine example of this in recent times. His melodic indie-pop album ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ from 2007 is so unlike his 2010 R’n’B coops with Jay-Z and Kanye West that it’s hard to believe that he’s the same human being.

Despite all of this, there is a silver lining. Today, record labels are facing the digital download revolution. Money is moving away from album sales and you’ll find that many new laptops don’t even come with built-in CD drives anymore. The growing internet is allowing bands to self publish, and promote themselves, and music is being shared more between friends online. It’s a chance for music to shed its industrial bonds a little again. Hopefully people will begin to think more about music, as business loses its control over what it is that we hear, allowing more innovative artists to come to the fore. These artists will need our support.

Consider this about the current situation: the creative process undergone in composing a piece of music is little different to that in writing a poem. But poems are approached critically and thoughtfully by any reader, inspiring colourful opinions. When presented with a piece of music, it seems acceptable to consider in it an extremely shallow sense; to hear it but not to really listen.

Recorded in a converted barn in their home state of Oregon’s Pendarvis Farm, The Decemberists’ fifth full-length solo album is a deeper foray into the music of their homeland than any of their previous work. From the harmonica that bursts onto the opening of ‘Don’t Carry it All’, both country and western are staring you in the face throughout. But the most inescapable influence is that of R.E.M, whose Peter Buck was hired to play on three of the ten tracks. As a consequence, songs such as Down ‘By The Water’ and ‘Calamity Song’ end up sounding like outtakes from R.E.M’s Automatic For The People more than anything else, and singer Colin Meloy’s drawling vocal quality is undoubtedly partially attributable to Michael Stipe. Yet the album does have its highlights.

As is so often the case, the simplest choices prove to be the best ones, and Meloy’s songwriting is most effective on those tracks where he leaves the barn-dancing behind in favour of simpler, acoustic forces. On ‘January Hymn’, he evokes maudlin and melancholic images of winters past, sung to a wistful melody as his guitar winds around circling riffs below. The similarly acoustic ‘June Hymn’ harks back to Neil Young and the better, more bearable sides of American folk-rock. But at other times, such as on ‘Rox in a Box’, the music just sounds as if you’re cringing your way through a Morris dance. Fortunately, The Decemberists have had enough songwriting experience to weave melodies sweet enough and lyrics weird enough for one to easily forget the questionable stylistic choices on this album. Unfortunately though, there is nothing special enough on The King is Dead to win them any fans outside of their already loyal fan base.

White Lies’ first album was impressive, debuting at number one in the UK album charts following its release in 2009. An interesting mix of Editors- and Killers-style indie with 80s Joy Division pop, the group scored hits with the (ironically) uplifting ‘Death’, and the infectious ‘To Lose a Life’. Their second full length album remains very much within the same indie/80s formula, yet in spite of some inspired studio production and expressive textures, Ritual lags in places. McVeigh’s voice is not to everyone’s taste – it might be considered rather a ‘love it or hate it’ kind of voice – but if you like the sound of Ian Curtis (Joy Division), you will appreciate this.

‘Is Love’ opens the album on a high, after a few deceptively bland few opening minutes of whiny synths and plodding drums are revitalised by the introduction of a turntable, breathing new life into the song. From there a steady layering of instruments brings the song to a powerfully dense finale. Following on from this is the album’s first single ‘Bigger than Us’, demonstrating the catchy songwriting familiar from ‘To Lose a Life’; here McVeigh hits his highest notes on the album with ease. ‘Peace and Quiet’ is an oddity: while not instantly catchy, it features some wonderful contrasts between spacey synths and conventional guitar work, building to a peak but mysteriously fading out to leave only the background tracks playing for considerably too long. This song captures the more spatial ambience of the first half of this album.

‘Streetlight’ marks the beginning of the second-half lag. Reminiscent of the melody from Joy Division’s ‘Love Won’t Tear Us Apart Again’, it is at this point that the novelty provided by the 80s-inspired style begins to wear thin. ‘Holy Ghost’ provides a brief return to a fantastic slice of softcore rave-rock, but the remainder of the album does not offer up anything new, and ‘Come Down’ leaves one feeling rather as if the band has, by this point, drifted off to sleep.

There is much to enjoy on this album, especially if you appreciated ‘To Lose a Life’. Yet despite some fantastic moments, this is not, regrettably, as slick as their debut.

‘Neither of us finds the contents of our heads particularly interesting’

Thus claimed Nick Zammuto, one half of The Books, in a recent interview. But, whatever they might have you believe, for nearly ten years the duo have, in fact, been making some of the most unique and creative music around. Over the course of four albums, The Books have developed themselves a niche all of their own, falling somewhere between Four Tet’s folk tinged electronica and the cut-and-paste mash-ups of The Avalanches. And following the success of last year’s acclaimed The Way Out, Temporary Residence will be reissuing The Books’ first three albums in the coming months, starting with debut Thought For Food.

The Books have described their work as ‘collage music’, layering live instrumentation (mostly acoustic guitars and violins) with spoken word samples taken from an abundance of obscure sources. Although this might all sound like rather pretentious formalism, The Books’ sense of humour is on show throughout Thought For Food, cutting their samples in such a way as to playfully distort their original meanings. On ‘Contempt’, the band constructs an absurd conversation between two men – “Do you like my ankles?” “Yes, enormously” – and ‘All Our Base Are Belong To Them’ declares “Welcome to the human race…you’re a mess” before kicking into full flow.

One of the few tracks to feature Zammuto’s vocals prominently, ‘All Our Base…’ hints at the direction the band would take on their peerless sophomore effort The Lemon Of Pink. Striking a precise balance between their experimental leanings and more traditional song structures, the track represents one of Thought For Food’s finest moments but, at the same time, does highlight the weaknesses of some of the more formless pieces on the record.

With this album, The Books were just beginning to explore the possibilities afforded to them by their idiosyncratic methods. The music here is at once deep and intelligent but at the same time light-hearted, almost goofy. Like kids in a candy shop, the sense of wonder with which the band treat their source material is infectious and one will find it almost impossible to listen to Thought For Food without a smile on one’s face.