Martin Fry goes from ABC to XYZ in celebratory show at York Barbican tomorrow

This is one of eight autumn dates as ABC build on the momentum of 2016 when Martin Fry returned to the fertile terrain of his early Eighties pinnacle to release the top five album The Lexicon Of Love II, as well as playing sold-out shows nationwide.

That was then, but this is now, when the focus will fall on the likes of Tears Are Not Enough, Poison Arrow, The Look Of Love, All Of My Heart, SOS, When Smokey Sings and The Night You Murdered Love.

"Here's an opportunity to open up the ABC songbook and journey through all the hits. Lexicon to Lexicon. ABC to XYZ. See you there," said Fry, when announcing the tour.

"We played a lot of shows last year. We've had a phenomenal time; we got a fantastic response, a very positive reaction, to Lexicon Of Love II, and now with this new tour we thought, 'we're not going to join all the dots, as we have nine albums – and we have a tenth we're working on – but we can play some of the songs we might not otherwise play'," says Fry.

ABC's poster for The XYZ Tour 2017

"I also thought it would up our game to have August Darnell [Kid Creole] on the tour. He had a show off-Broadway last year [the musical Cherchez La Femme at Ellen Stewart Theatre on 4th Street], and I've seen him live, and it's good to have him opening the show."

Formed in Sheffield in 1980, ABC fused the dancefloor world of disco funk with Fry's post-punk vision. Debut album The Lexicon Of Love rose to the number one spot in 1982 en route to selling more than a million records, and Fry and co have since made 1983's Beauty Stab, 1985's How To Be A Zillionaire, 1987's Alphabet City, 1989's Up, 1991's Abracadabra, 1997's Skyscraping and 2008's Traffic. The Lexicon Of Love II entered the charts at number five last May.

Love and politics have been at the heart of Fry's songwriting. "Music is not a weapon but it's a response to what's around you. Life is complex, and The Lexicon Of Love was introducing the possibility of creating an alternative world that you could buy into. They were pretty cosmopolitan songs," he says.

"I'd travelled all around the world, got back to Sheffield, and the world never quite seemed the same after New York and Tokyo. You have to ask a lot of questions about the place you're living in."

Fry returned to that theme for The Lexicon Of Love II. "I wanted to stand in the same landscape again after all these years. I'd played a show at the Royal Albert Hall and realised the audience had been through a lot of trials and tribulations, like me, and I thought, 'rather than singing these same songs again, I should address how it was now and bring that template into 2016'," he says.

"It kind of clicked straightaway. I started writing songs and it evolved into The Lexicon Of Love II. So it's looking at the world through my eyes at 56, and I realised there was something positive about. I like artists like Bruce Springsteen who do the same thing."

"I wanted to stand in the same landscape again after all these years," says (a seated) Martin Fry

The arrangements are as lush as they were on the 1982 original. "The album sounds as if it was made by an orchestra, like an opera, high gloss," says Fry.

Tomorrow's show will be high-spirited. "What the music and the show are all about is saying, 'We're still here, let's celebrate'. It's not 'here's my little violin'. It's loads of violins!" says Fry.

He has played Eighties revival shows, such as the Music Showcase Weekend race-day concert at York Racecourse in 2012, "but it's not about nostalgia," he stresses. "You have to give 100 per cent, otherwise the audience can see through it, so I thought I'd flip that nostalgia thing by making an album that reflected the world as it is now," says Fry. "I'm glad that people liked it, the radio stations and the record label; it felt like coming home. People like finding new music and not just young people."

On the crest of a new wave, Fry "wants to make a few albums while I can". "The new record we're now doing is pretty upbeat and we're looking to make something contemporary, though I don't want to veer off at a tangent like we did for Beauty Stab," he says. "So it'll be more like a continuation of what we've done with The Lexicon Of Love II."

ABC play York Barbican tomorrow (November 9) on The XYZ Tour 2017, supported by Kid Creole And The Coconuts; doors open at 7pm. Tickets update: still available on 0844 854 2757 or at yorkbarbican.co.uk, gigsandtours.com and ticketmaster.co.uk

Did you know?

Martin Fry first played a gig in York when a member of Sheffield band Vice Versa.