By Aditi Hrisheekesh, Music Deputy Editor
Seeing Sleeper again for the second time this year, I felt the contrast from the last time I’d seen them at Bristol Sounds – playing under the dusty cloud of both heat and rain. That earlier set had been shorter, with a more lukewarm crowd, people milling around rather than fully immersed. This time, under the lights of Electric, the crowd was alive and everything felt switched on.
Immediately, they launched into ‘Bedhead’ from 1995’s Smart – with brisk chords and vocals creating an intentionally charged kick-off. The guitars were propulsive – ‘got to go got to go but I’m easily led,’ pushed along by bass and drums. It was like a switch had been flipped, building up the energy for the rest of the show. Fronting the band, Louise Wener had a charming, bright stage presence that felt remarkably familiar.
Looking out into the audience, I could tell we represented the younger section of the crowd – surrounded by old-school loyalists, all attuned to that subgenre of ’90s Britpop led by women who were never quite given the centre stage they earned.
In total, the setlist balanced their most well-known tracks with fan favourites and a few lesser-played ones – Wener has said how the tour is meant to mix across their catalogue. Much of the material leaned into their mid-’90s era as the band dipped into five tracks from their most commercially successful album The It Girl (1996) – a record that crystallised Sleeper’s sound with lyrics both witty and identity-fuelled.
My friend and I especially enjoyed hearing ‘Lie Detector’ – we’d bonded over it before but had never heard it live (and weren’t expecting to). Probably my favourite song by the band, it unpacks the stereotypes that women are placed in with an irony – ‘It took a thousand clichés just to scold her’ – channelled through defiant and conversational vocals. This same idea is seen in their final song before the encore – ‘She’s a Good Girl’ from Pleased to Meet You (1997), which frames the ‘good girl’ archetype – pointing to the idea of manufactured sameness.
As one of the more prominent female-fronted Britpop bands, Sleeper have always raised questions of autonomy and identity because what happens when you don’t measure up, or simply don’t feel like you’re meant to? Wener's songwriting remains the hallmark that differentiates Sleeper from many of their Britpop contemporaries.
At some point in the night, someone in front of me overheard me mention Echobelly – another female-fronted Britpop band – to my friend, and joyfully remarked how she used to listen to the same music when she was our age. There was definitely a cross-generational appeal that night, uniting both old and new fans.
This cross-generational appeal became amplified with a mashup of Blondie’s ‘Atomic’ – a version Sleeper recorded for the Trainspotting (1996) soundtrack, and Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. Two bands from the tail end of the ’70s that helped pioneer the New Wave movement, performed here with a Britpop edge, felt perfectly placed in 2025. Celebrating both influence and also what’s yet to come, Wener held the mic out to the crowd to unite in singing, ‘love will tear us apart again.’
The set flowed into ‘What Do I Do Now’ – capturing that sense of uncertainty in relationships: ‘what did I do wrong? I thought we had it sorted.’ It’s a song where the dramas of youth and relationships play out against bigger cultural shifts. She also regaled us with an amusing aside about the infamous kiss-cam at the Coldplay concert that captured the notorious affair… right before seguing into a song about divorce.
The band pressed on into ‘Inbetweener’ in the encore, a song that’s become emblematic for the band and is what this tour celebrated. Released in 1995, it cracked the UK charts and, as Wener has said, speaks to suburban life and dreams that are left unfulfilled – that feeling of not quite knowing where you are or what you want. Placing it in the encore was a reminder of what first put the band on the map, while showing how those same feelings of uncertainty are still very relatable.
Megan Foulk
The final song of the encore, ‘Sale of the Century, ’ encapsulates Sleeper’s sound – lyrics about a certain kind of disillusionment are glossed over by bright, pop-driven melodies. This song definitely shows that there is something special in revelling in the moment, in that spontaneity that youth provides – ‘It’s never gonna be this good so just climb in.’
Sleeper have long existed in that corner of ’90s guitar-pop where female-led bands were often overshadowed. They’ve reclaimed some of the territory they always deserved.
Featured Image: Epigram / Aditi HrisheekeshWhat's your favourite Sleeper song?
