Beauty Stab

About

Following a classic early 1980s début album that was universally adored and bought by millions around the world ("The Lexicon Of Love") was never going to be easy for anybody, least of all Martin Fry, Mark White and Stephen Singleton who make up Sheffield's finest pop alchemists ABC. But then ABC were no mug. In all probability, they fully expected the critics and pop punters alike to eagerly await a helping of more of the same when 1983 started rapidly drawing to a close. Their relatively long silence after their fourth single lifted from their first album (the lushly symphonic showstopper "All Of My Heart") was scant preparation for what was eventually to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public in the form of taster single "That Was Then But This Is Now" - a much harder, early 70s Roxy Music-influenced pop/rock stomper which virtually blasted away all of the ornate trimmings of their last magnum opus and heralded a new phase of the band: one that was obviously now looking forward and not back. Mere weeks later, ABC's second album "Beauty Stab" appeared with noticeably less promotional bluster than that which greeted its predecessor. The sumptuous lovelorn decadence of the previous ABC incarnation was now supplanted with a more world-weary, politically-conscious model, and Martin Fry laid bare his new manifesto: social commentary with a musical edge to match. Out then went the lush string arrangements from Anne Dudley and synthetics from Trevor Horn's widescreen production, in came heavy rock guitar, in-your-face no-nonsense production by Gary Langan and stripped down arrangement. This was ABC kicking their past into touch and embracing the bleak reality of what life in the 1980s was REALLY about. The music was appropriately hard-hitting and visceral: all but just three or four of the 12 tracks feature prominent rock guitar riffs and some of the tracks are virtually heavy metal (70s/80s model....Deep Purple spring most immediately to mind)... Many critics recoiled in horror on first hearing the result, and even at some points questioned Fry's motives for coming up with such a deliberately retrograde move as to amount to a form of commercial hari-kiri.... but Fry was unrepentant, and indeed, over the course of the next 30 years (the album incidentally has just celebrated its 30th anniversary with, predictably, zero fanfare.....) "Beauty Stab" has become something of a rare beast - the great "lost" and "under-appreciated" masterpiece of the time, which also happened to be - perversely enough - *ahead of its time*. To be filed alongside other similar 1983 albums such as "Dazzle Ships" by OMD - another release which curiously enough suffered exactly the same fate for the latter act, but inevitably, has also since me with lavish reappraisal in the decades that followed. Much can be enjoyed from the sheer wild-eyed thrill of many of the harder pop/rock tracks on this album, in particular "The Power Of Persuasion", "Bite The Hand", "Hey Citizen", "Beauty Stab" (which to most seasoned radio listeners ended up being the driving - almost kick-ass - theme to the Monterey Rock Festival!!!), "Love's A Dangerous Language", and "Unzip"....whilst for those who missed the more reflective parts of their previous album, two ballads "If I Ever Thought You'd Be Lonely" and the criminally ignored second single "S.O.S.", and two grandiose side-closers "By Default By Design" and "United Kingdom" served to pacify. It's worth noting how, of all the big successful bands of the time who later looked to rock guitars to amp up their sound or make more stadium-friendly inroads to success - e.g. Duran Duran, Human League (for their 1984 album "Hysteria"), and Simple Minds in particular - it was ABC who first hit upon the idea of doing so....and yet, the payback for this refusal to tow the line and play safe cost them a lot of sales and inevitably both the album and its attendant singles quickly vanished without trace; even now most casual fans would hardly acknowledge that this album even existed if you should chance to mention the very name ABC. Most other bands would have taken stock of the relative failure of this exercise and return to their old sound - or something approximating their old sound - for the next album, in a bid to regain their audience....but no, not ABC. Ever the audacious risk-takers they were, for their *next* album (1985's "How To Be A Zillionaire!"), they underwent yet another quite astonishing transformation, and, bizarrely, it got them talked about in reverential circles yet again - but only after yet more initial bafflement from critics and public alike! .

via Last.fm

The Clerk says

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