ABC
The Lexicon of Love
(Mercury, 1980)

When King David lamented “How are the mighty fallen” in the Second Book of Samuel, he had more on his mind than the demise of a once promising pop band, but the quote fits the amazing rise and fall of ABC. They were new wave/new romantic gold record-winning hit-makers one day, and flowers in the trash bin of pop history a few short months later. Seldom has a band released an album with so many great tunes that it was a virtual greatest hits collection, only to vanish and never return. Well, okay, they did return, but their albums after The Lexicon of Love were so paltry that even the band’s website sums up their post-The Lexicon of Love output in five sentences. They’re currently playing the new wave nostalgia circuit.

ABC wasn’t exactly a one-hit wonder, they had five great ones, including four—”Poison Arrow”, “The Look of Love (Part One)”, “Tears Are Not Enough”, and “All of My Heart”—from The Lexicon of Love, but they were never able to duplicate the magic of their debut.

Short backstory: Lead singer Martin Fry wanted to be a music journalist, a more reputable profession in England than America, but that’s another story. He ran a fanzine called Modern Drugs and after an interview with a local Sheffield band, they asked him to become their singer. He agreed and after a few additions and subtractions of personnel they became ABC, thinking they would rewrite the alphabet of pop music. Fry loved Bowie, Ferry, the Clash, and glossy American soul music epitomized by Chic. The band wrote songs and dreamed up a sound that blended the Clash and Roxy Music to deliver grown-up romance supercharged with the energy of punk. They made demos, started their own record label, and lined up producer Trevor Horn, famous at the time for the presentient smash by his first band, the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

With Horn producing and Anne Dudley writing dramatic string charts, the band started recording. The first single, “Tears Are Not Enough”, made the UK Top 20 and then they unleashed The Lexicon of Love. The album entered the British charts at #1 and may be the greatest debut album ever made. Even the Beatles and the Stones took a few LPs to hone their style. ABC emerged looking and sounding (with a lot of help from Horn and Dudley) like pop stars that had been at it for decades.

The album opens with an overture that blends Technicolor movie music with Gershwin-influenced symphonic pop; then the drums kick in and we’re off to the races with “Show Me”, a chic, modern love song full of lush dynamics, Fry’s beautifully overwrought vocals, and lyrics dripping with angst-ridden poetry, not to mention a killer hook. It should have been a hit, too. The blend of Horn’s synthesizers and Dudley’s strings give the track and the album a polished sheen. The tune ends suddenly, and then a muted horn section out of Bowie’s Young Americans sets up “Poison Arrow”, one of the singles that defined the early ’80s. It’s a fresh, funky frolic with Fry’s vocals sexy enough to spawn a tsunami of groupies. It’s dramatic as hell, and ends like a car crash, then there’s a moment of silence before “Many Happy Returns” roars out of the speakers with sophisticated irony, driven by a solid Motown-influenced backbeat and icy synthesizer accents. A clattering Chic-like guitar figure introduces the Brit-funk of “Tears Are Not Enough”, which had already been a hit. Fry sounds hysterical and the little percussion touches, a piano that supports Fry’s vocal line note for note, and EW&F horn stabs heighten the frenzied emotion.

“Valentine’s Day” continues the sharp funk attack. It’s another song of desolate love crammed with romantic hyperbole that leads up to “The Look of Love (Part One)”, which opens with a nice Dylan paraphrase: “When your world is full of strange arrangements and gravity won’t pull you through.” The call-and-response of the chorus is Temptations with a blue-eyed smoothness, while Fry testifies like a soul man that’s been preaching love for centuries. Dudley’s pizzicato string accents morph into a wall of soaring symphonic strings almost drowning Fry’s anguished pleading. “Date Stamp” features the sound of a ringing, unanswered telephone. (Remember when telephones used to ring?) It’s the album’s one minor track, but it introduces the huge piano intro of “All of My Heart”, a relatively (for ABC) understated ballad. Fry turns down the desperation a notch, but still slips into his teary upper register to deliver his entreaties for reconciliation.

After all the dramatics, the album ends with a whimper rather than a bang. “4 Ever 2 Gether” is another tune of lost love, musically dark and moody, but not on par with what came before. “The Look of Love (Part Four)” is a brief instrumental reprise of the album’s strongest track. Still, the lame closing gambits can’t tarnish the brilliance of what came before.

In America, The Lexicon of Love wasn’t the blockbuster it was in the UK, but with high-tech videos for “Poison Arrow”, “The Look of Love (Part One)”, and “All of My Heart” on MTV, they did turn away business on their first US tour. The band started falling apart even before the release of The Lexicon of Love when the original drummer left. Seven short years, and many changes of direction later, ABC made Alphabet City, an attempt to recapture the magic. It included their last hit, “When Smokey Sings”, but Fry and guitarist Mark White were the only original members and the album suffers from its formulaic sound. Today, ABC is Fry and a revolving cast of musicians. ABC’s influences may have been obvious, but the songwriting was so strong, the arranging so inventive, and Fry’s vocals so finely balanced between sincerity and madness that such lapses are easily overlooked. The Lexicon of Love was a perfect pop album and still sounds timeless 30 years later.

Watch: “Poison Arrow” [at youtube.com]

Tags:ABC, The Lexicon of Love, Martin Fry

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