According to Mick O'Shear, Modern ""served to affirm that Buzzcocks could still appeal to a global audience while still remaining true to their original ideals."

"[5] Michael Sandlin of Pitchfork saw it as an attempt from the band to sound "current" and compared its programmed drums and "sputtering synth blips" to techno.

"[6] Antek Gun of Ox Fanzine said that instead of being a punk rock album, Modern sees the band "work with strange, rapidly alternating sounds, sizzling guitars, synthesizers from a forgotten time.

[13] Despite being described by some and by Shelley as an attempt to sound more modern, many critics compared it to new wave music of the late 1970s and/or early 80s; Joshua Klein of The A.V.

Club said Modern was "something else entirely" from their previous albums, calling its title ironic as it "essentially [picks] up where the band left off in 1981" after they split because it "sounds like it was recorded just as punk turned into new wave.

"[1] However, he also stated that "oddly enough, much of Modern resembles the art punk music founding Buzzcock Howard Devoto would later make in Magazine.

[1] Mark Caro of The Chicago Tribune agreed with the former statement, saying he assumed "the title is meant ironically because this is a very 1982 version of modern -- i.e., the Buzzcocks have discovered synths and drum machines of the sort singer Pete Shelley was using in his brief solo career.

Wilson Neate of Consumable Online said that "rather than destroy the pop song they [deconstruct] it, playfully reinventing it as a catchy, self-conscious pastiche of itself.

"[13] Neate noted that as with previous albums, Pete Shelley's work on Modern takes the historically distant, paradigmatic pop format of 50s and 60s bubblegum boy-girl songs as its starting point, but while the lyrical and musical framework of this foundational form is left nominally intact (the harmonies, the I/you romance narrative, the straightforward verse/chorus structure and the simple chord progressions), it is compressed into a shorter, faster package, supplemented and shot through with jagged, saw-like guitars, and scattered with irregular, staccato beats,[13] adding that "still crucial too is Shelley's distinctive vocal style which continues to unsettle the traditional, formal symmetry of conventional pop.

Modern is rife with examples of irregular combinations of short punchy stanzas and lengthy, weaving run-on lines–sometimes stretched out for a painful but compelling duration–that both carry and lead the songs.

Moreover, this combination of the brusque and the drawn out line--on top of the contrast of the staccato beats and the whining, UK-police-siren-circa-'76 guitar sound--emphasizes the twin-pronged emotional thrust of Shelley's lyrical content: that is, the expression of explosive angst and irritability coupled with lingering discomfort and frustration.

[16] When asking Diggle if the band were inspired by him on the album, replied "I’d forgotten 'Speed of Life', it was a little in-joke to me because I was taking a lot of speed at the time!

Britpop was underway, lots of crazy parties, hedonistic times, that notion of living your life, too busy to notice what you’re doing, don’t always stop and think ‘Who the fuck am I?

[18] This extra disc was an abridged version of the band's anthology box set Product (1989) and contains twelve of the band's early singles as well as an enhanced CD element featuring the music videos for the Modern song "Promises" and two of the early singles featured on the disc, "What Do I Get?"

"[15] The enhanced CD also features "loads of memorabilia", including a multimedia described by one critic as "a slide show without commentary and a bad interface" and the 1980s I.R.S.

"[6] Modern and the EP were not commercial success in either country, but the album saw steady sales due to the band's supporting tour.

"[15] Robert Christgau quipped that Modern showed the band "looking for the same new love with the same new tunes" and rated it a "three-star honorable mention", indicating "an enjoyable effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well treasure.

"[25] In a very favourable review, Wilson Neate of Consumable Online said that "during its finest moments, Modern reminds us that the Buzzcocks' significant contributions are often unfairly overshadowed by a tendency to look no further than the Sex Pistols or The Clash for a blueprint of British punk.

The Pistols wrote the book on punk-as-situation / style / shock, while the Clash covered the political angle, but the Buzzcocks (along with Wire) took punk beyond the gesture and the pose and left perhaps the most substantial and enduring musical legacy.

Club, on the other hand, wrote "the band reunited in time to ride the new punk wave, but something was missing from its two capable comeback albums.

The new Modern is something else entirely: Essentially picking up where the band left off in 1981, the ironically-titled disc sounds like it was recorded just as punk turned into new wave", calling it "retro in the best sense".

Michael Sandlin of Pitchfork rated the album 3.5/10 and called it "wholly ill-conceived and mind-numbingly dull" and that "[it] seems like a weak attempt by a once-great band to simply sound 'current', whatever that means.

"[14] David Daley of the Hartford Courant said "The Buzzcocks' caffeinated punk-pop of two decades ago was fueled by teenage angst and desire, and of their contemporaries, perhaps only the Undertones did it better.

But there's still something tragic about singer/songwriter Pete Shelley's attempts to milk those now long-dried wells on Modern, as his helium-voice laments the return to fast cars, watched phones that don't ring and misbegotten romances.

"[26] In his 2012 book The Anarchy Tour, music writer Mick O'Shea said that alongside the band's other post-reunion albums, Modern "served to affirm that Buzzcocks could still appeal to a global audience while still remaining true to their original ideals.

"[28] Alongside All Set, it has been said that Modern "reaffirmed Buzzcocks' position as a band deeply loved and revered by a global audience, simultaneously true to their original ideals and open to new ideas.