Bronski Beat
The Age of Consent

THE REVIEW

Here's a great album that has become a true icon of the gay world and beyond. Released in the mid-'80s, the album for the first time combined the carefree spirit of the '80s disco music with themes dear to that timid group (gay? perverts? queers? oh dear, what now?) that struggled so much to have their rights and proper freedom of expression recognized ("the age of consent," which the title refers to, was the legally established age for having the first sexual relations without legal repercussions in England!).

But the movement that Bronski Beat launched and reinforced, supported by the enterprising personality of Jimmy Sommerville, the true mastermind and icon/banner of the group, was expanding the themes not only to the homosexual sphere but also embracing pacifist movements (most notably with the splendid "No More War") and singing about dreams and desires that transcend to the youth of today just as it did then. A wave of novelty where the courage to come out and loudly claim one's gay pride served as an amplifier for the cultural currents of the time, significantly contributing to widen this base of human and civil consciousness to literature, cinema, theater, etc. All of this was seasoned with the lightness and rounded brightness of the music, intriguing and shamelessly danceable, that made the legs and heads of the early '80s youth whirl.

One of the truly cathartic and dazzling works of the London trio that disbanded after just a few rather insignificant albums. Sommerville tried his hand again with the Communards, placing some equally good tracks, then the desert. Last year, if I'm not mistaken, the now half-bald hairless singer released a CD that went completely unnoticed: a slow and inexorable parabola common to many bands that shine for the duration of a flash and then fade and end in oblivion. C'est la Vie, dear Jimmi...