More on Simon Reynolds

Jacques Attali: “Music is a herald, for change is inscribed in noise faster than it transforms society.” That music has stopped changing, Mr. Reynold suggests, reflects something gravely amiss in the wider culture. Sounding like Oswald Spengler (whom he in fact alludes to), Mr. Reynolds sees retromania as the leading edge of a fin de siecle cultural morbidity. “When you look at the culture of the West in the last decade or so—the dominance of fashion and gossip, celebrity and image; a citizenry obsessed with decor and cuisine; the metastasis of irony throughout society—the total picture does look a lot like decadence.”