Back when I was first getting into punk and indie, allmusic was my best friend. I haven't gotten stuck in a really long time. You hit a point eventually where you become so open minded/accostomed to so many sounRAB that almost any band somebody digs, you'll fancy to a good extent.
I'm all for researching banRAB before you get them too. Theres nothing worse than finding someone who thinks Pavement sucks because they picked up a random album by them, and it happened to be Terror Twilight.