Review
Genre and Mood
Bronski Beat’s Screaming is synth-pop of the 80s with the dancefloor taken away. The title promises noise; the song delivers a melancholic, introspective and dark stillness, the starkest moment of an album better known for hi-NRG anthems.
Song Summary
Screaming is the third track of The Age of Consent, released by London Records on 15 October 1984 and produced by Mike Thorne. Its words are abstract. Archie Marks of Redbrick heard them painting a portrait of inner turmoil; Joseph Ryan-Hicks of Attitude wrote that on this song Somerville’s turmoil about his sexuality reaches a head; for Lesley Chow of The Quietus, the narrator’s pounding recollections of abuse seem eerily distant, as if perceived through a layer of ice or anaesthetic.
Musical Breakdown
The Arrangement
No source walks through the track section by section. What a reviewer on Sputnikmusic did describe is its place in the album: songs like Bronski Beat – Ain’t Necessarily So and No More War have a subdued beat and clarinet breaks, and Screaming strips this back even further to create a thoroughly austere mood.
The Voice
What remains in the foreground is Jimmy Somerville. The same review calls his falsetto the album’s most idiosyncratic feature, present on every track but Junk.
Concepts in Focus
falsetto is the light, high register above a singer’s normal range. Sputnikmusic heard Somerville’s as versatile: a rallying cry on the energetic songs, and a voice that takes on a vulnerability of its own on the introspective ones. Screaming is one of those.
The song’s history touches the soundtrack. Framed Youth: The Revenge of the Teenage Perverts, a 1983 documentary in which gay and lesbian teenagers interview people on the streets of London, credits a song called Screaming to Somerville; the film won the Grierson Award in 1984. Steinbachek heard Somerville singing while it was being made, and that is how the band began.
Screaming also exists in more than one alternate version: a demo on the 2012 deluxe edition of the album and a Stripped Mix that London Records later published as a visualiser. Set either against the album recording and listen for what changes.
Artistic Context
Bronski Beat were Somerville, Steve Bronski and Larry Steinbachek, who wrote the album’s songs together. In 1984 the UK’s age of consent for sex between men was still 21, and the inner sleeve listed the age in every European country. The album’s best-known songs are its singles, among them Bronski Beat – Why ?.
Impact and Reception
The album reached number four in the UK and 36 on the Billboard 200. Forty years on, three of the anniversary reviews single Screaming out. Listen to it alone, without the hits around it.
