To watch Britain’s music program “Top of the Pops” in 1984 was to witness masculinity wipe off the last of the spit and sawdust. You had blond, black-gloved geeks like Nik Kershaw and Howard Jones, bouffy matriarchs Queen and Ozzy Osbourne, white-teethed go-go boys Wham!, leathered-up imps Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and slinky queen Boy George—not a donkey jacket between them. When Bronski Beat made their “TOTP” debut on June 7, 1984, they were radical because they looked so normal—behold 22-year-old singer Jimmy Somerville’s green polo shirt and severe army-issue haircut. The last thing anyone would have expected from Somerville’s cartoon good-boy face was a diva-strength lament for runaway gay youth. Add in Steve Bronski and Larry Steinbachek’s HI-NRG rhythms and desperately forlorn keyboard motif, and their debut single “Smalltown Boy” was kissed with the melancholy transcendence of its disco forebears: Sylvester in suburbia. It was perfect.
”Smalltown Boy” remains a perfect song. It is nimble and crushing, forlorn and relieved, frail yet determined. In just a few lines, Somerville sketches the plight of the young queer kid in suburbia, beaten up by bullies but refusing to cry in front of them; concerned about how his mother will respond to his disappearance, but certain that he has to save himself first. Steinbachek and Bronski briefly slow the tempo, trapping the listener in the sense of purgatory that Somerville distills, but then add a hand-slapped congo that hits like a rush of adrenaline as a new life comes into view. Although Somerville’s liberation is palpable, he’s not interested in happy endings: The song ends with him repeating the line about leaving in the morning “with everything you own in a little black case,” acknowledging the thousands of young people who would make the very same journey. The inner groove of the 12-inch was etched with the number of the London Gay Switchboard.
Posted from: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bronski-beat-the-age-of-consent/
