I think that on the whole, American rock music tends to be a little more 'straight ahead'. There's less pseudo-intellectualism going on, I think. It's almost as if a lot of popular American rock bands are just there to have a good time and make good music. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. Although it is true to say that British rock leans more towards indie, with that comes a certain pretension which can be kind of irritating sometimes, which American rock doesn't seem to have so much. I'm talking in broad terms here, but I that even if it is a generalization, it's one that has some truth in it.

Britain has Radiohead, America has the Foo Fighters. I'm really not playing favorites with either, in fact I'm actually quite partial to some Foo Fighters on occasion, while Radiohead leaves me cold. However while Radiohead has a definite air of intellectualism about them, I don't think either the Foo Fighters have ever had the desire to make anything more than enjoyable, well crafted rock music. Which, again, can become boring sometimes, but it can feel like no new ground is being covered Of course, this is a generalization on both fronts. A lot of British rock music does nothing new, even if it is well made (See Royal Blood for example, they're great at what they do, and I'm actually a really big fan, but they're not even trying to push boundaries) and there's a lot of extremely intelligence American rock music (not mainstream in a pop sense, but Parquet Courts come to mind if you want intelligent, original American rock). I'm not for one minute trying to write off either of the British or American rock scenes, because they've both spawned many genuinely brilliant bands, but for every great band that's come from ether scene, there's 20 more trite, boring, uninspired groups who sell a million albums.