Spandau Ballet - Diamond (1982)

Artist:  Spandau Ballet
Title:  Diamond
Release:  1982
Format:  LP
Label:  Chrysalis Records
Genre:  New Wave, SynthPop
Catalog#  204514

“Diamond” is the second studio album by Spandau Ballet. It was released on 25 May 1982 by Chrysalis Records. The album was promoted with the single “Chant No. 1 (I Don’t Need This Pressure On)”, which was released in 1981, a full year before the album.
 With the new romantic movement they’d helped spearhead on the way out, futurist icons Spandau Ballet began thinking seriously about the future on their second album. The seeds of the group’s transition to a slick, MOR soul outfit can be heard in hits like “Chant No. 1,” the best song Spandau Ballet had come up with. More funk than rock, “Chant No. 1? got punctuation from the horn section of the British R&B act Beggar & Co., who were apparently a major inspiration for the track. “Diamond” features other tentative moves toward an authentically soulful sound; the tuneless single “Paint Me Down” is all chattering rhythm guitar and popping bass, while “She Loved Like Diamond” offers an inferior trial run at the approach that would produce the global mega-hit “True” (this version has an underdeveloped melody, which is OK, since still-improving vocalist Tony Hadley wasn’t ready yet for a better one). The rest of the album sounds like the group had been listening too long to the second side of David Bowie’s Heroes. “Pharoah” is off-kilter funk reminiscent of “The Secret Life of Arabia” a dubious choice for emulation and the gentle, oriental balladry of “Innocence and Science” segues into “Missionary,” a percussion-filled mood piece light on actual substance.


Side one
1.  Chant No. 1 (I Don’t Need This Pressure On)  (4:07)
2.  Instinction  (4:47)
3.  Paint Me Down  (3:45)
4.  Coffee Club  (5:32)

Side two
1.  She Loved Like Diamond  (2:56)
2.  Pharaoh  (6:37)
3.  Innocence and Science  (4:27)
4.  Missionary  (7:00)

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