Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Bridges are those in which we reach out in the hope of finding people in which to share meaning and understanding with, the passion and the fury, the love and the memories. They are the symbolic gesture that binds us but also they can be the moment of destruction, when the fragile peace and accord is ripped apart and razed to the ground, all that remains is the blackened stumps of former trust and the smouldering fire and for the dogged individual, for the one who sees that all eventually will smoulder, the phrase of the 21st Century personal revolutionary and social anarchist, They’re My Bridges And I’ll Burn Them If I Want To has perhaps never been more fitting.
The post modern anarchist has perhaps more to distrust in life than ever before, the sense of Government treating its citizen’s with absolute distaste, when all that stands between fire and safety is two pounds, when so called austerity has become a mantra for the rich to beat the poor with, to put a noose around them and shackle them further into debt and punish them; if these are the bridges that once tied us too society, it is no wonder that so many are willing to go and purchase the metaphorical Swan Vestas in which to burn down that which connects us to society.
Scabeater’s They’re My Bridges And I’ll Burn Them If I Want To hits home with this modern tirade against all and everything, however it is not the tired symbolism of past punk culture or the ill thought out excuses of just not fitting in; this Scott Midlane proving that the general public, the everyday and the law abiding, those who adhered to a good life and honest pursuit of meaning, have been taken for the ride of their life and are now suffering for all that has come falling down around them.
With tracks such as All I’ve Got Left Are The Two Houses, Three Cars and The Place In France Now, Godless Smile, Such A Drag, The Silent Voices of the Night and In This Cuntry we speak Ingerlish, Scott Midlane’s Scabeater voices anger, unrestrained bitterness and beautiful anger, a resolution to see rotten ideologies burn before they fester any further; like a scorching of a plague ridden city, sometimes the world needs that reassurance that decaying institutions will finally be razed to the ground.
A truly impressive album, coupled with passionate lyrics and written by a deep thinking man; They’re My Bridges And I’ll Burn Them If I Want To is a connection worth exploring.
Ian D. Hall