Nevermind: How political rock became a pose; pop politics, just a close cousin to guitar-smashing and girl-chasing?

Ultimately, the irony faced by today’s political bands is that they are themselves symptoms of the disease they set out to cure–a tendency that Rage, which agitated against globalization from within the confines of an a monolithic media company, epitomized so well. With the musical scene fissuring into a million niche markets controlled by three or four corporations, there’s no real perch from which to register one’s dissent, or reach out to others who might share the sentiment. The divide between fan and star has grown disconcertingly wide, and the concerns of one seem terribly far from the occupations of the other.

The New Republic