3:57
Script Of the Bridge, 1983
Written by Mark Burgess, Dave Fielding, Reginald Smithies, and John Lever
I've never heard of this British post-punk band, but this track grabbed me immediately. Singer Mark Burgess' charismatic vocals, the atmospheric layers of guitar, and the muscular, clockwork drums all swirl to create a proto-gothic, dark, ambient sound. The abstruse, anxious lyrics hint, like the title, at trying to struggle onward but only sinking further: "There must be something wrong boys / They're dragging me down." There's a doomsday paranoia at the edges, fitting the song's era of mutually assured nuclear destruction: "Now they can erase us / At the flick of a switch." It's a tense, propulsive piece that eventually slows into a kind of exhausted drift, as if the will to fight finally gives way to resignation and release.