ABC: THE LEXICON OF LOVE
Whisk me back to 1982, I’m walking along Piccadilly in London to a massive record store where I am about to part with about ten pounds and buy a copy of a new album. Then it’s the long journey, tube and train to my garret flat in Streatham before I can slip the vinyl out of the sleeve, pop it delicately on the turntable and settle back and listen for the first time to The Lexicon Of Love.
Move forward again to the present and I’m sat in the Brighton Centre and equally excited. ABC have put together a tour where they are playing the whole of that iconic album live with a full on orchestra. I am filled with anticipation, excited but also anxious. Can they pull this off? Can Martin Fry still deliver that distinctive voice? And will that promised orchestra be the full on experience that we have been hoping for?
The wings gradually fill up with musicians and a quick count up of chairs on the stage suggests that the Lexicon Sinfonia is going to be a powerful orchestral presence and as they file onto the stage that promise becomes a reality. A reality that comes to life as they strike up and deliver a stunning overture of familiar tunes.
The evening is divided into two halves and in the first we get some familiar and some new songs. We get The Night You Murdered Love, When Smokey Sings, King Without A Crown… and so much more and the memories, and lyrics come flooding back. The sound is so close to the studio sound, they are not messing with it, but it has a renewed power and vibrancy.
After a short interval they return and start the main event, Fry is peppering the evening with tales of Sheffield and the vibrant music scene that emerged in the early 80s but it’s the music we are there for and it is simply brilliant and the audience, almost completely men and women of a “certain” age, are lapping it up. They play every track, both sides, in order too and they do it with real conviction and with style, and it’s just what we want.
On the down side the staging, and by that I mean the lighting, is a dismal and artless hotchpotch. The whole would have looked better without it. And as a designer and typographer myself I was totally offended that the letter C in their iconic logo had been cropped so badly that bottom curve was missing, and yes, pedant that I am, I checked that when I got home!
But I was there to hear the music and that was superb, and across a wet and cold evening I was simultaneously made to feel very old and very young again!
Andrew Kay
1 November
The Brighton Centre
Rating:
