I think there's better music being made these days than there has been for about the past fifteen years. And I don't think it's to do that much with bands being throwbacks, because there have always been throwbacks. Maybe it's just that I like what they're throwing back to now more than I like what they were throwing back to a few years ago.
I never could stand Simon Reynolds's music journalism though. He was always one of those who looked too deeply for an underlying psychological explanation for every NOTE, when the musicians he was analysing would laugh and tell you themselves that most of what they did came as an accidental consequence just of farting about in the studio, probably stoned.