Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

It could be argued that for many of us The Modern Age is not what we thought it was going to be but then with hindsight and given our past, what else could it be but one in which the urge to rebel, to create havoc and roar as if cornered by some disease of will that has seen us sleep-walk into an era that is only a short step away from being a dystopian novel writer’s fantasy creation. It could have all been so different but then would that have brought back from the depths of the never again promise that 90s Brit Pop favourites, Sleeper insisted upon.

It is to insistence that the fans of the band, and the strangers to whom will be greeted by this album as if it a wonderful stamp of luxury, owe a debt to, a feeling of the familiar bursting out of the seams, a return for the herald who long thought their time was to be found penning tales and making sense of they saw once conquered, now given a new lease of life because The Modern Age has revealed old wounds to which once more must be vanquished and defeated.

Outward looking, the album is a reminder of what has been missed along the way, a sense of the inevitable curse uttered without being profane, the will to dissect and divide someone else’s dogma without looking as if you are looking for a fight, just to spread the word that all is not well in the age we live in.

Across songs such as Look At You Now, The Sun Also Rises, Car Into The Sea, Blue Like You and Cellophane, Sleeper re-emerge from out of the formative Brit-Pop Era and instead become icons for a generation that has been let down by initial pandering and fawning and now feels the icy blast of realisation that those who went before actually never cared as long as they were in control.

To return to an arena in which you once stood tall and with the distance of time perhaps isolating what you once achieved is to be a giant, to be able to comment on The Modern Age in which you have been once again pulled is to reaffirm your extraordinary prowess, one that has never fallen into slumber in the hands of Sleeper.

Ian D. Hall