Pop band ABC spoke to and transcended its era at Jergel's

WARRENDALE − It’s tempting to focus on the incongruity of Martin Fry’s Pittsburgh appearance Tuesday, because it seems so blindingly obvious.

There were Fry and the latest iteration of his band, ABC, cramming their glamorous, widescreen pop into the friendly confines of Jergel’s Rhythm Grille in Warrendale. From their earliest days, ABC’s elegance was custom-tailored to tuxedos and orchestras. How would it fit at Jergel’s − on Bike Night, no less?

It ultimately did, because there’s always been more to Fry than deceptively suave surfaces. He’s a steel town boy from Sheffield, and, as author Simon Reynolds once perceptively noted, his path to pop stardom was not a foregone conclusion.

“[H]e wasn’t quite a natural singer,” Reynolds wrote in "Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984," adding, “Nor did Fry have the innate panache to fully play the debonair role he’d cast himself in. Fry willed himself to be a star.”

That willpower long ago transformed Fry exactly to what he once aspired to become. Long after most of his MTV peers have gone to fat and seed, Fry remains elegant at age 64. Stalking the stage Tuesday in a natty paisley blazer and evening pumps, and with his voice still supple (he wisely eschewed the falsetto accents of several songs), he was as gracious a guide to ABC’s past glories as could be wished.

Fry and his five-piece band chose a tightly-sequenced 15-track greatest hits set that clocked in at just over an hour, and included every significant U.S. single the band released. Not surprisingly, a third of the offerings came from "The Lexicon of Love," which debuted 40 years ago and made the band stars at home in Britain, and here in America as well.

There were highlights from later albums: the Motown pop of “When Smokey Sings” and the hip hop-inflected “Be Near Me” − both Top 10 singles − included. But it was the oldest material that, paradoxically, transitioned most successfully to the stripped-down presentation.

On "Lexicon of Love," ABC and producer Trevor Horn crafted symphonic disco that married irresistible pulse, sweeping orchestration, and cynical lyrics. The results produced big hits like “Poison Arrow” and “The Look of Love,” both of which were predictable crowd favorites.

But perhaps the best tribute to the durability of that sound is the two newest songs the group played at Jergel's. “Viva Love” and “The Flames of Desire” both appeared on "The Lexicon of Love, Part II," a 2016 follow-up album that repeated the aesthetic of its famous predecessor.

"Lexicon II" reached the Top 10 in the UK − the band’s highest chart placing in more than a quarter-century. But it’s likely most of the concertgoers at Jergel’s were unfamiliar with it, since it was largely ignored in America.

No matter. Driven by longtime band member Andy Carr’s basslines, the new songs effortlessly married the old and the new. (It was a transition that some of ABC’s later material didn’t manage as easily: the Chic tribute “The Night You Murdered Love” dragged a bit, and, stripped of its high vocal parts, 1985’s “Vanity Kills” didn’t quite get over.)

There’s one other incongruity worth mentioning, and that is the other change that’s occurred in Fry. A spiky and sometimes confrontational figure when he was just graduated from the ranks of postpunk, his acidic tales of love gone awry have lost their brittle edge. And why not? He’s been happily married for going on 40 years −he still sports his wedding band onstage − and the loss at the heart of ABC’s greatest hits has mellowed into a romantic glow.

Fry noted it himself onstage Tuesday, after playing “All of My Heart,” perhaps the biggest-ever of the band’s Big Statements. On record and on video, it was a heartbreakingly over-the-top indictment of a failed relationship. “I hope and I pray/that maybe someday/you’ll walk in the room with my heart,” Fry sang.

But here, and at a distance, it was a happier occasion. If it was bittersweet, it had more to do with the world “All of My Heart” once inhabited: a world of MTV, and seven- and 12-inch vinyl, of record labels and charts. A simpler world of lost youth.

Characteristically, with the ease of a practiced showman, Fry noted this passage of time in the gentlest manner possible. “You all look too well-preserved to be from the 1980s,” he insisted, to grateful cheers.

For all its success, ABC is a group that has never gotten its rightful due. Since his commercial peak, Fry has periodically released albums that show him to be a true craftsman −1997’s "Skyscraping" and 2008’s "Traffic" among them. Those collections are well worth investigating, and prove that ABC was always more than just production flash.

That same point was made at Jergel’s. The modesty of the environment did nothing to constrain the soaring strengths of ABC’s songs, which − like the best of all pop − speak directly to their era, even as they transcend it.

Pittsburgh’s Tiny Wars opened the show with a 30-minute set of the sort of melodic AOR in vogue when ABC debuted. Comprised of several veterans of the local scene (including radio personality and guitarist Abby Krizner), the quintet was powered by a punchy, limber rhythm section. The eight songs included a cover of Eddie Money’s 1982 hit “Think I’m In Love,” which epitomized Tiny Wars’ feel-good retro appeal.

Dan LeRoy is the director of writing and publishing at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School in Midland. He is the author of several books, including a volume in the 33 1/3 series about the Beastie Boys album "Paul’s Boutique," and the forthcoming "Dancing to the Drum Machine: How Electronic Percussion Conquered the World" (Bloomsbury).

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Pop band ABC spoke to and transcended its era at Jergel's