Rolling Stone

 

ABC

The Lexicon Of Love

RS Rating: ****

 

 

There are a million ways to say "I love you" in pop music, and Martin Fry, the singer and leader of ABC, has managed to cram many of them onto this dazzling debut album. Fry, who wears his heart on his silk shirt sleeve like a giant diamond cuff link, flashes a Phil Spector-like armada of horns, synthesizers, strings, percussion and backup sirens as he compiles a pumping disco dictionary of sordid B-movie romantic maneuvers and smug sexual wordplay.

The heartbreaking turns and wicked verbal jousting that characterize the lyrics ("With your heart on parade and your heart on parole/I hope you find a sucker to buy that mink stole," he sings in "Valentine's Day") may seem like soap opera fare. Yet Fry's vocal playacting – broad gestures à la David Bowie fringed with Bryan Ferry's aching tremolo – and the intricate yet remarkably fluid arrangements turn them into a winning combination of Gamble-Huff R&B glitz and martial funkadelic guts.

ABC's recent British hit single, "Poison Arrow," is typical of the songs here: a dramatically pleading chorus and a nimble bass line are elevated to the level of High Pop with the strategic deployment of a smoky soprano sax, an oriental marimba figure and a synthesized drum roll that explodes in Fry's face as his girl brutally cuts him down. Producer Trevor Horn (formerly of the Buggles and Yes) orchestrates these devilish touches into a series of snowballing climaxes braked only by the Bowiemeets-Henry Mancini sweep of the candlelight ballad "All of My Heart."

Martin Fry's fixation on the language of love and the look of his songs suggests that this album doesn't come entirely from the heart. But the hydraulic pump and radiant glitz of the The Lexicon of Love are guaranteed to leave you swooning in spite of yourself. If not in Fry's tears, then certainly in your own dance-floor sweat. (RS 378)

 

DAVID FRICKE

(Posted: Sep 16, 1982)

 

 

 

 

The Observer

 

Lexicon Of Love, ABC

Neutron, 1982; chart position: 1
Tom Cox relives the spirit of the early Eighties

Sunday 20 June 2004
 

With its gold lamé flourishes, Lexicon of Love seemed to come from nowhere on its release in June 1982. In fact, ABC had come into existence when Martin Fry had interviewed guitarist Mark White and saxophonist Stephen Singleton, two members of Sheffield-based electronic act Vice Versa, for his fanzine Modern Drugs. Once Fry joined as a singer, he took control of the band, changed their name, and forged an album full of musical contradictions that would stand as a high-water mark of Eighties pop.

At its best, Lexicon of Love sounds not unlike Scott Walker fronting Chic. You might be forgiven for thinking that nobody in their right mind would want to mix hi-energy hedonist's beats with existential crooning, but Fry sounds very much in his right mind, high on his own wordplay as brilliant couplet after brilliant couplet trips off his silver tongue. Even the bits where he gets the female backing vocalists in and whispers to them don't sound too cheesy.

This is largely because there's so much commitment in his voice that Lexicon's songs - potential hits, every one of them - demand to be taken seriously. Philosophising like 'Your reason for living's your reason for leaving', set against elastic basslines, runs a little deeper than the heart of Saturday night, and makes you forget so many of the rules: that disco is meant to be flippant, that it should have been dead by 1982, that an Eighties production like this isn't meant to sound so lush.

The contribution of producer Trevor Horn (already famous with Buggles and later to work with Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Tatu) was key, but so too was the band's attitude. 'We spend a lot of time crafting the songs - they must be danceable, memorable, intelligent, functional, passionate,' they said at the time. 'These things shouldn't be excluded from pop music - they should be exploited and exaggerated.' Conscious of their place in a Sheffield scene that had also thrown up the Human League, they added that 'writing songs is more important than any movement'.

ABC's next album saw the start of a slow decline, but Lexicon of Love had already made good on all their promises - and had hit number one to boot.

Burn it: The Look of Love; All of My Heart

 

How it felt for Martin Fry:

'For 'All of My Heart', Trevor Horn said we should go for a big orchestration, and we were a bit reticent. He gave me an IOU and said if the record went to number one he would give me £1m. The single didn't actually get to number one. The album did but I've never cashed it in.

'Trevor's attitude was that anything was possible. He said: "If you want a clarinet player, I can get you a clarinet player. If you want pizza, I can get you pizza." That was inspiring. When I listen to it now, it does have a consistency because it's all about the same thing: me ranting on about lost love. 'Show Me', the opener, would be my favourite track. Twenty-two years later I can still get in a taxi and someone will say "So Martin, have you found true love?"'

 

 

 

 

BBC Online

 

What a joy to hear this album again. It underpins just what a sharp band ABC were:...

 

Rob Webb 2004

 

ABC appeared at a turning point in pop, as the rough and tumble of post-punk gave way to a more sophisticated, lithesome Brit-funk, expounded by bands like Pigbag and Funkapolitan. Decked out in tailored suits and gold lame, the Sheffield quartet - fronted by the elegant Martin Fry - pounced onto dance floors in October 1981 with the splendid "Tears are Not Enough". "Poison Arrow" kept the blood circulating during the bitter winter of early 1982, before third single "The Look of Love" became their biggest hit. Then came the much-anticipated album, The Lexicon of Love. Now, over two decades later, their definitive statement gets the deluxe reissue treatment.

What a joy to hear this album again. It underpins just what a sharp band ABC were: witty, lyrical and very, very funky. Only Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom rivals this album for the smartest lyrics of 1982. And you can't dance to Elvis. Each track is a love affair in miniature: some are touching ("All of My Heart", "Show Me"), others a bitter invective at misplaced passion ("Many Happy Returns"). There is more going on in "2 Gether 4 Ever" than many bands squeeze into an entire album.

Band and producer Trevor Horn gelled immediately when they met to record : Horn described Fry's songs as "like disco, but in a Bob Dylan way". Dance music had rarely been as literate.

The extra tracks on disc 1 don't add a lot to the 1996 reissue, which expanded the original album with various jazz remixes and B-sides: notably their calling card, the James Brown-inspired "Alphabet Soup", and "Theme from Mantrap", their lounge version of "Poison Arrow". Disc 2 features some early demos and a previously unreleased live run-through of virtually the entire album, recorded during the band's heyday in 1982.

The Lexicon of Love stands as a landmark album in British pop. The synthetic Eighties' drum-thwaks and Chic-esque bass lines sound better now than ever. It gave disco a whole new vocabulary and helped pave the way for the dance movements of the late Eighties and Nineties. "I hold in my hand three letters," announces Fry on "Alphabet Soup". "Vitamin A, vitamin B and vitamin C". No prescription needed; no supplements required. This album replenishes mind, body and soul.

 

 

 

 

PopMatters

 

ABC: The Lexicon of Love

By David Medsker 9 April 2002

 

A guilty pleasure, for those with shame. For the shameless, a pop classic.

Few periods in music are viewed with the contempt that is held for the early ‘80s. We witnessed the death of disco and punk. New wave suddenly meant A Flock of Seagulls instead of The Pretenders or Talking Heads. MOR (Olivia Newton-John, Sheena Easton, Kenny Rogers) ruled radio. Amid all of that chaos was 1982, which for ages was my favorite year for music. Some faves include Roxy Music’s Avalon, Duran Duran’s Rio, Billy Joel’s The Nylon Curtain, Simple Minds’ New Gold Dream, and even Rush’s Signals. I’m also a fan of Marshall Crenshaw’s debut, which came out in 1982, but I confess I discovered that one only recently.

 

The belle of the 1982 ball, though, was ABC’s The Lexicon of Love. It’s like disco done right, with one eye on the theater stage (the album cover states that rather obviously) and another on the dance floor. Trevor Horn made his name producing this record, creating a lush landscape that no one previously considered him capable of doing, based on his work with Yes and the Buggles. Sure, it was shamelessly over the top, but not in a gaudy way (unlike, say, Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Welcome to the Pleasuredome, also produced by Horn). It was a classic example of right place, right time for all concerned. ABC would go on to experiment with rock, house, and Motown with mixed results, to put it mildly. But The Lexicon of Love still holds its own, and is one of the best UK pop records of the ‘80s not made by the Smiths.

 

The quiet string intro to “Show Me” implies an album modeled more after the musical Annie than Chic, but then the thunderous rhythm section storms in and scarcely lets up. Martin Fry then takes center stage, with his tales of deceitful women and love lost: “When I need to feel you near me, you said, ‘Don’t have the time’.” “Poison Arrow” takes things a step further. “Who broke my heart? You did, you did,” the bridge taunts, but the kicker might be the break where Martin pleads, “I thought you loved me, but it seems you don’t care,” only to have the girl reply, “I care enough to know, I can never love you.”

 

Yes, the album’s title is more than a tad misleading. The Diary of Heartbreak may have been more accurate, but didn’t quite have the same ring to it. For all of Fry’s cries of wrongdoing, there’s nothing he wants more than love, love, love. Why the girl won’t give him any is clearly a mystery to him. “If you gave me a pound for the moments I missed, and I got dancing lessons for all the lips I should have kissed, I’d be a millionaire. I’d be a Fred Astaire,” he snaps on “Valentine’s Day.”

 

“All of My Heart” is the showstopper, a string drenched ballad with more emotion than anything Bryan Ferry had penned in ages. “Add and subtract, but as a matter of fact, now that you’re gone, I still want you back.” Fry lets his guard down for a moment to stop hurting the one he loves and flat out begs please baby please baby please baby baby baby please for it. And still doesn’t get any. How this song never showed up in a John Hughes movie is beyond me to this day, as it is still Lexicon‘s, and quite possibly ABC’s, finest moment.

 

The biggest squabbling point with Lexicon is the lyrics. For every well-placed crushing one-liner, there is another line that would make even Adam Ant blush. Take the line from “4 Ever 2 Gether”: “I stuck a marriage proposal in the waste disposal.” But perhaps the most glaring example is from the album’s biggest hit, “The Look of Love”: “When you judge a book by the cover, then you judge the look by the lover,” which makes no literal sense whatsoever. Even the puppets near him in the video started beating him up shortly after he sang that line.

 

In retrospect, The Lexicon of Love was an incredibly ballsy record to make. The worst thing imaginable in 1982 was anything even remotely close to disco, especially from a bunch of cheeky unknowns from Sheffield. But being British seemed to work in their favor. Instead of being viewed as disco, it was New Romantic synth pop, or something, which was the Next Big Thing at the time. But let’s be real here: it’s a disco record, and a damned good one at that. There are lots of bands I loved back then that I’m a little ashamed of now (Kajagoogoo’s “Too Shy”, for example), but I still stand by The Lexicon of Love as one of England’s finest.

 

 

 

 

Robert Christgau

 

ABC: The Lexicon of Love [Mercury, 1982]

Since Bowie and Ferry sold surface in disguise back when they were supposedly saving rock and roll, I don't worry about this tribute band's lack of depth. Martin Fry's candid camp and ad-man phrasing don't fully justify his histrionic flights, but they do give him room to be clever, which is clearly his calling--some of these synthetic funk rhythms make me laugh out loud, and he's an ace jingle writer. "If that's the trash aesthetic I suggest that we forget it"? Not when your throwaways include bon mots like "looking for the girl who meets supply with demand." A-

 

 

 

 

AllMusic

 

ABC

The Lexicon of Love

• AllMusic Rating *****

 

Review by William Ruhlmann

 

ABC's debut album combined the talents of the Sheffield, U.K.-based band, particularly lead singer Martin Fry, a fashion plate of a frontman with a Bryan Ferry fixation, and the inventive production style of former Buggles member Trevor Horn and his team of musicians, several of whom would go on to form the Art of Noise. Horn created dense tracks that merged synthesizer sounds, prominent beats, and swaths of strings and horns, their orchestrations courtesy of Anne Dudley, who would follow her work with the Art of Noise by becoming a prominent film composer, and who here underscored Fry's stylized romantic lyrics and dramatic, if affected, singing. The production style was dense and noisy, but frequently beautiful, and the group's emotional songs gave it a depth and coherence later Horn works, such as those of Yes ("Owner of a Lonely Heart") and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, would lack. (You can hear Horn trying out the latter band's style in "Date Stamp.") Fry and company used the sound to create moving dancefloor epics like "Many Happy Returns," which, like most of the album's tracks, deserved to be a hit single. (In the U.K., four were: "Tears Are Not Enough," "Poison Arrow," "The Look of Love," and "All of My Heart," the last three making the Top Ten; in the U.S., "The Look of Love" and "Poison Arrow" charted Top 40.) ABC, which began fragmenting almost immediately, never equaled its gold-selling first LP commercially or artistically, despite some worthy later songs.

 

 

 

 

Amazon.co.uk

 

Homegrown soul produced by Trevor Horn and including the pop hit "Look of Love", The Lexicon of Love is bursting with hooks, clever lyrics and synthetic funk-inspired grooves that hold up better than most others from the early 1980s. ABC leader Martin Frey sings with a histrionic despair, at once naive and cynical, and all dressed up by horn and string sections that feel positively overwhelming. Such larger-than-life arrangements may seem over-the-top to some listeners, but as the soundtrack to a lexicon of love--how else would you expect it to sound? --David Cantwell