Slate--Carl Wilson vents considerable spleen against "Crescendo Rock"

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2013/05/the_national_s_trouble_will_find_me_reviewed_too_many_crescendos.single.html

Beneath the surface, the National’s work is full of moves like that. But I still dislike the surface. I dislike the traces of a British accent in Berninger’s rich baritone (he’s from Cincinnati). I dislike the midrange restraint of most of the melodies and the sleepy midtempo pace, making it artificially thrilling when things pick up at all—as when drummer Bryan Devendorf kicks the march beat into double-time, two-thirds through the new album’s first single, “Sea of Love,” though Berninger carries on the same oh-so-stately procession. Most of all, I dislike the way many of the songs milk themselves, doubling down on their repetitions by getting denser and louder in later sections.

This is a common trait of many popular and acclaimed bands that turn me off. I call it Crescendo Rock—I’ve had similar misgivings about U2 and Radiohead, though I’ve aired them less because their fans go way more apoplectic. To me, the bands each sound like a group of guys who feel they’ve got something to say and demonstrate their significance by saying it over and over, getting louder and louder.

In the "classical" tradition this sort of extensive expansion on a single, simple musical idea is often thought of as variation.  More particularly, we could speak of the chaconne or the passacaglia.  There's some foundational musical idea that gets built upon in increasing complexity until it reaches whatever climax the composer(s) settle on and then the music reaches some kind of conclusion (or in pop music the big fade-out).

Unlike sectional variation forms a chaconne or passacaglia is a continuous set of variations.  In other words the bass line never stops moving along to the next variation.  There's no abrupt resolution to each variation the way we would hear in the Goldberg Variations of Bach or the Diabelli variations of Beethoven.  Nope, just a continuing surge toward the next iteration of the idea.  Shostakovich wrote some solid passacaglias in his string quartets if you're curious to hear a 20th century version of an old, old idea.  If you want to hear a pop passacaglia then U2's "With or Without You" is probably the best example, right down to the Pachelbel re-heating of the big FOUR CHORDS. (See Chords for Heroes and its follow-up here at Wenatchee The Hatchet, if you like).

Still trying to muster up the resolve and research to discuss Matiegka's approach to sonata form in his Grand Sonatas for solo guitar.  :(  In lieu of that discussing, briefly, how formulaic certain brands of "crescendo rock" are might be a useful detour.