Thirty-four years after the release of their classic début The Lexicon of Love, ABC will release a sequel to the album in May.
Lead singer Martin Fry, now the sole remaining member of the original ABC line-up, wrote the album in collaboration with Living in a Box’s Marcus Vere, who told website BlastEcho that The Lexicon of Love 2 will be released on May 15. The first ABC album since 2008’s Traffic, Vere claims that the first single from the album will be Viva Love, a song that dates back to the sessions for the 1991 album Abracadabra.
Although Trevor Horn, producer of the original 1982 masterpiece, isn’t involved – production duties on the sequel are handled by Gary Stevenson, producer of albums by Go West, Rick Astley and, er, Sean Maguire – Anne Dudley returns as orchestral arranger and Julien Temple, director of the band’s early videos and their full length movie Mantrap, will direct the video for Viva Love. How the 2016 version of the song relates to the 1991 original remains to be seen, but ABC’s recent cover of Radiohead’s High And Dry may serve as a pointer.
