No one could have made a more stunning entrance into early eighties pop than ABC. First album 'The Lexicon Of Love' was a pop classic dripping in strings and white-boy funk which, having done the chart-topping business here, went on to slay America and confirmed Martin Fry and his shapeshifting line-ups as true pop gold as their lame suits.
Then, the difficult second ('The Beauty Stab'), underrated and mad third ('How To Be A Zillionaire') and 'Lexicon...' pastiche fourth ('Alphabet City') albums followed with varying success and living continously in their debut's shadow.
It's this period - 1982-87 - that this collection comes from. Combining 17 B-sides and album tracks, there's nary a hit in sight apart from a remix of first single 'Tears Are Not Enough'. As an introduction, it's fairly shoddy. The sort of thing best left as part of a box set.
The tunes aren't vintage ABC - merely sketches compared to the masterpieces on the A-sides - stand outs including the tinklesome 'Mantrap' and the thunderously loony 'A-Z'.
Not nice, not particularly fair on even a casual viewer and a birrova con. Avoid.
