After “The Lexicon Of Love” dropped, ABC were on top of the pop world. They sold records by the truckload to po-mo aesthetes as well as grannies besotted with Martin Fry’s verve, gold lame, and clever wordplay. They could have tried to make “Lexicon part II” but it would have been a fool’s errand. Instead, ABC moved in the complete opposite direction.

ABC – Beauty Stab | 1983 – 3

Like any of ABC’s legion of fans besotted with their stunning debut, I was all set up to immediately buy this album when it was released. I liked the shambolic single “That Was Then And This Is Now,” which was issued as a lead in for their sophomore album. It featured pickscraping guitars aplenty and was exhilarating in its defiance of the classic rules of songwriting. Two choruses, two verses and no middle eight; just over a minute of mounting drums that end in a chaotic noise. It was the furthest thing possible from the meticulously coiffed sound of “Lexicon.” The group had pared down to the trio of Fry, White, and Singleton as drummer David Palmer had moved on. They didn’t seem to have a permanent bass player. Soon the album appeared and it was furiously disparaged by all and sundry, causing me to hold back for about a year instead of adding to those first week numbers.

When I finally grabbed a used LP I was treated to what is a definitive artistic volte face that was unparalleled in the annals of pop. In fact, in the ensuing decades, I have seen this album name-checked countless times in “worst second album” polls in the usual places, but I just can’t join that damning chorus. What ABC delivered the second time around was an album that actually did sound like Roxy Music; long bandied about as an influence at the time of “Lexicon.” While its true that Bryan Ferry’s artistic temperament certainly informed that of Martin Fry’s unquestionably similar post-modern/camp Sinatra outlook, the resultant music didn’t sound a lick like Roxy Music to me. I heard more Motown than Eno at the time.

That was no longer the case as the muscular post-Eno Roxy period was mined for every last bit of sound they could carry away. Moreover, they did the smart thing and hired the killer rhythm section on Roxy’s own “Flesh + Blood” opus; Alan Spenner on bass and Andy Newmark on Drums. On a cut like “If I Ever Thought You’d Be Lonely” it conspires to make the intro sound exactly like my favorite Roxy Music intro of all time – that of “Flesh + Blood’s” title track. When the swelling bass synths don’t appear it actually disappointed me the first time I heard it; so bold was its appropriation. Afterward, I reveled in the fact that there was now another song to begin in much the same powerful way. Later in the song when David Theodore’s oboe enters the fray, all bets are off as ABC deliver the best late period Roxy Music pastiche I’ve ever heard outside of Japan and Icehouse! The string and voice ballad that closes out side one [“By Default By Design”] has the more than a whiff of “Bitter-Sweet,” albeit without so much sturm und drang. Bonus points to Fry for not trying to sound like Bryan Ferry. There’s way too much of that.

If you’re a trainspotting rock fan, there are plenty of clever quotes that are in abundance on this album. “Love’s A Dangerous Language” starts off with what sounds like a berserk remix of Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” guitar intro and “Hey Citizen’s” intro sets me up for “Saturday Night’s Allright For Fighting” every time. The title cut is a succinct and excellent instrumental that is way too short for my tastes. Lyrically, these songs are the harsh morning after following the candy-floss pursuit [however bitter and unsuccessful] of romance on “Lexicon.” Fry claimed to have symbolically thrown his gold lamé suit in the dumper following a world tour that painted a harsh picture of conditions in the world under the guidance of Thatcher and Reagan. The overall thrust of the lyrics are defiance of The Man but are often diffuse to the point of vapor when viewed in the cold light of day.

By the end of side two, the vague yet dissatisfied lyrical imagery begins to coalesce into something more substantial. “King Money” needs little interpretation. Nor does the following “Bite The Hand.” Well, they certainly must have known that the making of this album was exactly what that title spoke of. The band produced with The Art Of Noise’s Gary Langan presiding and went for a rather different sound. That doesn’t mean that they completely eschewed matters of the bedroom. “Unzip” is a driven rocker with a killer chorus hook, but even this song about sex on an album ostensibly about politics casts a coldly objective eye on the whole charade as it gives the lure of romance a pass. The funky clavinet doesn’t hurt either.

The album then hits the home stretch with the second single “S.O.S.” which might have been a hit with its delicate backing vocals over a rhythm box. The expansive backing chorus hints strongly at the ABC sound of yore and the finished result doesn’t sound a million miles away from Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing,” but by that time, the bloom was off the ABC rose. The single sank in the lower reaches of the UK 40. A catastrophe for a band that once had a lock on the top 10 just months earlier.

The album side closes with another vocal ballad, this time with piano accompaniment. “United Kingdom” is the pointed culmination lyrically of all that ABC was aiming for on this album, with bitterly sardonic lyrics decrying the thrust of British society. There are no rhyming couplets for their own sake to diffuse the message as on many of these albums tracks. If the whole project had been focused this succinctly, the record may have had more admirers at the time. And therein lies the reason for the grade of 3 out of four. I love what ABC were attempting on this album even as they were not quite all the way to their goal. The movement out of their highly successful soul-funk-pop bubble is admirable. It’s comparable to what another Sheffield band, The Human League was doing concurrently.

Whereas “Hysteria” is a shambles of a record, “Beauty Stab” holds together much more soundly with twelve punchy songs that admirably fly in the face of expectation and have aged far better than anyone would have guessed in 1983. There’s no denying that the band’s reach exceeded their grasp even as this former synthesizer band careened from soul-funk to crunching guitars in the space of three years. Fortunately, the lessons of this album were not lost on ABC as they moved in yet another completely different direction for their third album before eventually returning to the tropes they attempted to manipulate here with much more success at a later time.

Next: …And now for something completely different [again]