Review Summary: Distinctive Scottish falsetto Jimmy Somerville's first foray into pop music, this fairly overlooked piece of 80s synthpop has almost infinitely more meaning behind it than many of its more successful contemporaries.
Only legalised 4 years before
The Age Of Consent was released, growing up as a homosexual in Scotland was difficult, to put it mildly. From a purely legal perspective actively engaging in homosexual activity could mean 2 years in jail, or incarceration in psychiatric institutions. Socially, the historically conservative nature of the region could mean being ostracised from friends and even family wasn't impossible. When openly gay Glaswegian Jimmy Somerville lived with Steve Bronski and Larry Steinbachek in a London flat circa 1983, it was his experiences of this social stigma, as well as Bronski and Steinbachek's own, that eventually led to the outspoken synthpop found on
The Age of Consent.
The most idiosyncratic feature of
The Age of Consent is almost inarguably Jimmy Somerville's signature falsetto. With the exception of the more typically Caledonian-sounding Junk, it's the consistent feature of every track from the bombastic
a cappella first few seconds of opener 'Why?' to the Hi-NRG closer 'I Feel Love/Johnny Remember Me' (featuring Soft Cell's Mark Almond). What's particularly impressive is how versatile and effective this proves to be - whereas it is strong enough to act almost as a rallying cry during the more energetic moments of the album, it immediately takes on a vulnerability all of its own when dealing with the more introspective subjects of mental abuse and loneliness, which crop up time and time again.
While Somerville is the most distinctive facet here, it is the musical arrangements of Bronski and Steinbachek that lend much to the overall somewhat oppressed feeling that shrouds much of the album. Tracks such as 'It Ain't Necessarily So' and 'No More War' have a jazzy, slightly 'clandestine' sound characterised by a constant but subdued beat and clarinet breaks (synthesised in the latter and authentic in the former); 'Screaming' strips this back even further to create a thoroughly austere mood, in accordance with the bleak lyrical content about the familial and personal struggles with closeted homosexuality. This isn't to say that
The Age of Consent is a constantly dreary affair however - we are talking about the album with 'Smalltown Boy' and a cover of Donna Summers' disco classic 'I Feel Love' after all, and indeed it is largely these tracks which stick longer in the head long after the playing time is up. There are one or two duds, namely 'Heatwave' which serves to be more annoying than secretive with its continuously grating motif, but these are eclipsed by the high standards set by the majority of the songs and can therefore be more or less looked over.
Perhaps because of its politics, Bronski Beat's debut never reached the dizzying heights of, say, Duran Duran's 'Rio' and Wham's 'Make It Big'. While this was to be Somerville's only release with them before moving on to form The Communards, the sense of honesty and conviction that went into the making of this means that, if not the best, it's certainly the most endearing project he's been involved in.
The Age of Consent is unashamedly gay, beautifully introspective in parts and gloriously fun in others - arguably one of the 1980s' underrated gems.
