"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, adding that "still crucial too is Shelley's distinctive vocal style which continues to unsettle the traditional, formal symmetry of conventional pop.