OTR: Bronski Beat - The Age of Consent

Bronski Beat's manifesto was simple: "we're queer, we're here, get used to it." The album art of The Age of Consent is emblazoned with a pink triangle, the original liner notes included a list of nations paired with legal age of consent for homosexual acts, Jimmy Somerville sings in an effeminate falsetto and they even throw in a cover of a show tune for good measure. All in all, the band's 1984 début was a great big "fuck you" to the establishment in the most stylish and danceable way possible. While Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Soft Cell were balls out and in your face, none was more direct in the "we're not going to take it anymore" category than Bronski Beat.

The album bears repeated listens to reveal all of the layers within. Also, some might find that Somerville's voice takes a bit of getting used to, though this voice would reach epic proportions in the Communards' ten minute rendition of "Don't Leave Me This Way." The centrepiece here, of course, is "Smalltown Boy," a five-minute tale specifically about being young and gay in the close-minded countryside but which could just as effectively apply to anyone who dares to be different in a municipality where the cows and the corn outnumber the human beings.

I own a reissued version of The Age of Consent, which removes the legal advice from the liners and replaces it with an essay about the influence of the album on England's music and political scenes. Also, while the original ten tracks of the initial pressing still appear here, one also gets six "bonus" tracks (two remixes and four non-LP cuts).

Jimmy Somerville would leave Bronski Beat after this album, while the rest of the band soldiered on without him for three more discs before calling it quits. Somerville would release two albums with the Communards followed by a solo career which has seen four albums to date. On his latest release, he covers Depeche Mode's "But Not Tonight," which I would be very interested in hearing.