Rob Webb wrote: "It underpins just what a sharp band ABC were: witty, lyrical and very, very funky (. ABC will celebrate the 40th anniversary of their seminal debut album ‘The Lexicon of Love’ with a very special UK orchestral tour in June 2022. In 2009, ABC (with Fry as its sole member) performed the entire album at the Royal Albert Hall in London, accompanied by the BBC Concert Orchestra and conducted by arranger and composer Anne Dudley. Don Waller of the Los Angeles Times praised the album, stating that producer Trevor Horn "deserves a share of the applause, but the songs — credited to all four ABC members — are the real deal: apocalyptic, widescreen romances with more hooks than a meat-packing plant. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 70, indicating generally favorable reviews, based on eight reviews.

surround sound Blu-ray remixes by Steven Wilson, as well as a remastered vinyl edition of the original mix, was announced for release on 4 August 2023. That unlikely contrast between fastidiousness and heart-on-sleeve abandon yields songs as thrilling as love's first blush. From retrospective reviews, AllMusic wrote: "The production style was dense and noisy, but frequently beautiful, and the group's emotional songs gave it a depth and coherence later Horn works (. Tickets to ABC’s The Lexicon of Love UK Tour go on sale from Absolute Radio Tickets at 10am on Friday 17th September 2021. It features four UK top 20 singles; " Tears Are Not Enough", " Poison Arrow", " The Look of Love" and " All of My Heart".The wit and rigour of ABC’s first album make it a standard-bearer for the opulent strain of '80s pop known as New Romanticism. Some of the founding members of the later record label ZTT Records and the band The Art of Noise collaborate in the production of the album.

The album was followed by a tour with the band extended to an 11-piece onstage, reaching Europe, USA and Japan. The Independent gave the album a negative review, stating that "too many of these tracks are slight ideas and punning phrasework over-egged into grotesque wedding-cakes by Dudley's billowing strings, leaving Fry stranded in the position summarised in 'Brighter Than The Sun': 'I'm a man out of time/Looking for a mountain to climb'.Martin Fry said that the band's ambition was to fuse punk and disco, music that was more sophisticated but still had some attitude. ABC released the follow-up album ‘The Lexicon Of Love II’ in May 2016 and it entered the Top 5 of the UK album chart. The 10-date headline tour will see Martin Fry and his band perform ‘The Lexicon of Love’ in its glorious entirety together with other hits from ABC’s back catalogue. Crooning, whispering or bellowing, Martin Fry is the group's suave centre of gravity; Trevor Horn's vivid production on disco-pop numbers like "Poison Arrow" and "The Look of Love, Pt.

This Trevor Horn-produced album remains a benchmark of 80s pop, and a formidable collection of melodramatic love songs assembled in one neat package. The album was produced by Trevor Horn, engineered by Gary Langan and features orchestrations by Anne Dudley and Fairlight CMI programming by J.Opening at Oxford New Theatre on Friday 17th June 2022 and closing at Southend Cliffs Pavilion on Thursday 30th June 2022, the tour includes a very special homecoming show at Sheffield City Hall on Tuesday 17th 21st June – exactly 40 years to the day since the release of ‘The Lexicon of Love. The shows at Hammersmith Odeon in November 1982 were recorded for inclusion in ABC's forthcoming film Mantrap. To date, ABC have released nine studio albums: ‘ The Lexicon Of Love’ (1982), ‘ Beauty Stab’ (1983), ‘How To Be A Zillionaire’ (1985), ‘Alphabet City’ (1987), ‘ Up’ (1989), ‘ Abracadabra’ (1991), ‘Skyscraping’ (1997) , ‘Traffic’ (2008) and ‘ The Lexicon of Love II’ (2016). The Guardian gave the album a positive review, stating that it was "the sound of an old master falling not far short of a standard that his youthful self set very high indeed. Including] songs as perfect as 'The Look Of Love' – replete with knowingly absurd talkover – or the jaw-dropping 'All of My Heart,' still one of the '80s most underrated singles.