The Room - Sleepless (9x9 Records)

It is fair to say that 38 years between recordings is a bit of a wait. That isn’t to say that the band’s personnel have been twiddling their thumbs since The Room’s eighties heyday, and names such as Benny Profane, Dust, and Dead Cowboys, not to mention The Room in the Wood, have filled the interim years.

But now singer Dave Jackson and bassist Becky Stringer have reunited with the band’s original line-up to reconvene where the band left off. And, unlike many acts getting back together after all this time, rather than devalue their brand, for want of a better word, and resign themselves to the status of heritage act, playing the songs of their youth for the gratification of those stuck in the past, they have jumped straight into creative pastures new.

With a new album, Restless Fate, already out and up for grabs, songs such as “Sleepless” will easily put them straight back into the public conscience. There is still a whiff of the Liverpool of their formative years, a Bunnymen -infused, indie eclecticism, but they sound nothing but of the here-and-now, a heady blend of left-field pop and a progressive post-punk poise for the discerning, contemporary alt-pop picker.

It is a song that blends delicate six-string chimes with incendiary guitar drives, dark and slightly world-weary lyrical understatement, and a warning of the dangers of social media and the attitudes and addictiveness surrounding it.

Worth waiting for? I’ll say.

Restless Fate LP
Apple Music
CD order
Rough Trade vinyl / CD order
Norman Records vinyl order