Q

Music Week

There's a dreamy, ethereal sound to this unmistakeably ABC offering, their first for five years. The Human League made a successful return; Martin Fry et al may find it harder.
(3 out of 5)

SKYSCRAPING

The pleasantly swoonsome title track of ABC's return album. Summery vibes mix with Martin Fry's instantly recognisable vocal with rewarding results.
(4 out of 5)

ROLLING SEVENS

Not the best track from the Eighties icons' new album, but this sounds contemporary and radio friendly, rammed to the gills with Fry's swooning vocals and pomp. Fab.
(3 out of 5)

Lexicon, still widely regarded as a defining album for the time, immediately reached the UK number one spot and stayed there for four weeks. The album also proved to be sort of an albatross around ABC's neck because the further output of the group would always have to be compared to the initial successes. In late 1982 the group starts an exhausting world tour bringing the group across Europe, United States and Japan. Some of the group's live performance is caught in the Mantrap, video which is released at the end of 1983. The second ABC album Beauty Stab is released towards the end of 1983 and sees ABC make a brave change in direction. Instead of cashing in by using the Lexicon blueprint they radically change their style to a more guitar-oriented sound. To stress the new style, as opposed to the perfectionist Lexicon, the group attempts to record Beauty Stab as sort of a live-in-the-studio album. The end-result is a reasonably good album. The album is however lacking killer-singles and somewhat unfairly cracked by the as-always ultra-conservative British music press.

The third album How To Be A Zillionaire sees ABC go through a radically change of style again. The images are cartoonlike, the clothes extravagant, the sound a mixture of hip-hop and electro dance music. The group is highly succesfull in the United States, scoring a top-ten hit with Be Near Me and having two more huge dance hits with How To Be A Millionaire (aided by a well-crafted cartoon-video) and Vanity Kills. The public in Britain however, is not impressed.
 
 

In 1986 Martin Fry develops Hodgkins Disease, a form of cancer, and is close to death. He recovers however and at the end of the year he gets married and starts working on the fourth album Alphabet City . The release is preceded by two Bernard Edwards produced singles When Smokey Sings (A tribute to soul-veteran Smokey Robinson and a US top 5 hit) and The Night You Murdered Love. When the album is released it quickly becomes ABC's biggest success since Lexicon reaching number 7 in the UK album chart. The album sees ABC return to it's soul based roots and gets a good reception. For the 1989 Up , ABC catches up again with trend, this time house music which is quickly making its inroads into the UK. The album is fantastic, the groups skills are at their absolute peaks. Martin Fry's singing better than ever, penning some of his strongest lyrics while Mark White expresses himself in tunefull masterchords. Still the record bombs due to Phongram's unwillingness to promote the album in a proper way. ABC by then have already moved to another record company, Parlophone, and start working on their sixth studio album Abracadabra. They also contribute to albums by Lizzie Tear, Arthur Baker, Paul Rutherford and M People. Phonogram in the meantime releases a '90 remix of The Look Of Love, the groups biggest UK hit from 1982, which is heavily opposed to by ABC who even urge fans not to buy the remix which they describe as shoddy. Phonogram also releases a greatest hits album containing singles from the 81-89 period called Absolutely. The quality of that album is stunningly good, showing ABC at their supreme finest.
 
 

Abracadabra despite containing dancefloor favourites Love Conquers All and Say It (in a remix by Black Box) fails to make a big chart impact and the group is eventually dropped by Parlophone after having mastered a number of tracks that remain in the vaults. After the Abracadabra album Mark White has left the group leaving Martin Fry as the only original member. In 1996 Martin Fry teams up with guitarist Keith Lowndes and Heaven 17 singer Glenn Gregory and starts writing and recording a new album for the Deconstruction label. Early 1997 a new single is released, the pleasant Stranger Things and ABC even do a number of live shows culminating in a successfull performance at the London Shepherd's Bush Empire. The album Skyscraping is released in March and the title track is released as a second single of the album. In June ABC will do their first big tour since 1983!
 
 

"From gold lame suits and new pop with an entryist smile ('Lexicon of Love' in '82) right up to optomistic house ('Up' in '89), ABC have attempted to purvey stylish dance music that knows where it's coming from. Most of the press interest, however, has revolved around their failure to consolidate on the success of 'Lexicon of Love'. The perrenial runners up of British pop".

A Decade of i-Deas - i-D magazine 1990.

Official ABC site

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Special thanks to Melvin Welters, Thorsten Blankertz and Paul Desmond

  for their help with this page. 

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