The “battle of the bands” marketing gimmick had its roots in the 1960s, in the manufactured confrontation between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and its decaying corpse was of course cringe-makingly resuscitated thirty years later for the Oasis / Blur Britpop mid-off. But what most people don’t know – and probably don’t care to find out – is that this half-assed propaganda piece enjoyed a brief, largely forgotten, bargain basement-style deployment in the early 1980s, when Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet did battle to determine which lacquered boyband would be remembered by about 12 people as the primary purveyors of “sophisticated” New Romantic synth-fuelled pop music.

And in keeping with both bands’ appeal to excitable and unspoiled teenage girls, this monumental confrontation played out not on the British charts, or even in catty columns on the pages of the rock music press, but rather on the BBC’s limp-wristed Pop Quiz. On this unsightly cavalcade of late 20th century cringe, where a single lit match would surely have transformed the entire set into a Dantean inferno of combusted hairspray, the bespectacled and preposterously coiffured Mike Read asked eight assembled airheads searching questions about, for example, who wrote the lyrics to their own songs, with most of those present conspicuously and mortifyingly unable to answer.

The interesting thing about Spandau Ballet, though, is the strange path they took to becoming a New Romantic boy band. Their first album, Journeys to Glory, is a compelling and uncomfortable slice of crypto-fascist post-punk electronica, with an austere Joy Division-esque cover and icy, autistic, Krautrock singles about steel workers in the Soviet Union. And yet, a mere two years later, here they were on Pop Quiz, with massive mullets and shit-eating grins, shamelessly allying themselves with Duran Duran, their nominal rivals, to spearhead the unmistakeably Thatcherite New Romantic synthpop movement, with its in-your-face wealth and I’m-alright-Jack music videos portraying Club Tropicana and boat trips around the Maldives. Some might say that the progression from Albert Speer-inspired electronic postpunk to crooning establishment Thatcherism was a logical one. In retrospect, however, it seems aesthetically jarring, comparable perhaps to Simple Minds’ audacious transition from diffident arthouse creeps to stadium-bestriding trendy Church of England rock’n’roll vicars.

Anyway, it is most pleasing that I’ve already managed to get a third of the way into this review without writing anything about the music on True, Spandau Ballet’s third album, for this is a herculean task indeed. The album comprises 80s electronic balladry of the most textbook and pedestrian vintage. And as a brief survey of the contemporary pop music scene shows, there was nothing inevitable about this queasy safeness and lack of danger. Even Duran Duran, with their discombobulatingly distorted and metallic vocals, tendency to rock out despite the moogs, and willingness to write weird songs about the threat posed to the social order by feral youths, were considerably more adventurous than this. In fact, the release of Prince’s game-changingly original Purple Rain lay but a year in the future, as hard as that is to believe, considering how anodyne the record under review here is.

For True is all polished, politely structured synthpop – though, of course, of the smooth, warmly accessible, soul-inspired, Brylcream-wearing variety, rather than the moody, icily detached, Bowie-in-Berlin strain. Predictably, it’s punctuated by the occasional guitar and those insufferable jazzy saxophones so beloved of both middling 80s synthpop acts, and by the composers of theme music for daytime talk shows directed at suburban wine moms. The most striking musical aspect of the sound is, of course, Tony Hadley’s note-perfect 1920s-style crooning, but even this is wearyingly flawless, much less interesting than Simon le Bon’s strange and heavily treated cybernetic wail. Spandau Ballet probably imagined that they were invoking the globe-trotting suaveness of Sean Connery’s Bond, when in fact, it sounds like the Phil Donahue Show is about to start. Which is not to say that the album is terrible – far from it. I have reviewed records for this blog that were borderline unlistenable: True isn’t. It goes down easily, comfortably, making no trouble. But the impression it leaves is minimal.

One thing that you can definitely say is that Spandau Ballet picked the right singles, or at least their management did. “Pleasure”, the album’s swingy, oddly mournful opener and its fifth single, details different sources of jouissance, from cars to bars to sex on the beach, while the bouncy, abrasive “Communication”, the second single, is presumably about the inadequacy of different forms of communication to expressing the mysterious depths of Gary Kemp’s love. It’s a shame the iPhone hadn’t been invented by 1983, otherwise this song probably wouldn’t exist. “Lifeline”, which was inexplicably the album’s lead single, showcases some nice, fizzy, Van Halen-style keyboard riffs and lyrics about, presumably, a woman in love with a soldier, contract killer, or perhaps a disreputable Eastenders character, like the one that bassist Martin Kemp would later play, to his eternal shame.

I say “inexplicably” because True includes two bona fide 80s classics which should have immediately suggested themselves as the record’s first singles. “Gold” is a buoyant eruption of almost messianic self-belief – though one rendered oddly cold and Thatcherite by the chilly synths and Tony Hadley’s commanding and unflappable vocals. As if in answer to Duran Duran’s loafer-wearing, yacht-sailing exploits in the Indian Ocean, Spandau Ballet managed to recruit Sadie Frost and cover her in gold paint for the video – an obvious Bond reference, and a further, perhaps unwitting alignment of the band with the obscene, psychopathic affluence of the 1980s.

Better still is the album’s soul-inspired title track, which was number one on the British charts on the day I was born. It’s not that obvious what the hell Tony is singing about – Gary found it hard to write the next line, after all – but it represents the one moment of yearning and authentic emotional connection on an otherwise coldly cynical collection of aspiring radio hits.

Sadly, the rest of the album comprises breath-takingly mediocre mid-80s fluff. The cruise liner cringe of “Code of Love” probably fancies itself as a subtle and knowing take on the shallowness of modern relationships, where it’s “hard to make those long-term plans”, but ultimately, it’s more Octopussy than Goldfinger. The swingy “Heaven is a Secret” attempts some kind of West Side Story reference, while “Foundation” mentions cocktails and thus alludes to the conspicuous affluence of Thatcherite synthpop. But these songs are buried on the second half of the album for a very good reason.

Overall, I suppose, True’s balance sheet is not quite as bleak as might be assumed from the excoriating tone of this review. It includes two 80s behemoths in “Gold” and “True”, three respectable singles, and only a further three eminently forgettable late-album floaters. The sound is smooth and digestible, and I find the cynical yuppie preoccupation with material success and radio airplay to be perversely amusing. It’s certainly a praiseworthy two fingers raised to the malodorous hippies who, in 1983, were yet to emerge from the fog of cannabis that had first engulfed them on the day that Led Zeppelin IV was released.

Yes, True sounds like a record to which Patrick Bateman would devote an entire chapter of American Psycho. But the lack of danger, risk-taking, and personality is simply too insidious; there’s none of George Michaels’ impish, slightly psychotic charisma, or Simon le Bon’s megalomaniacal pretentions to being the reincarnation of Shakespeare, and dressing accordingly. It’s basically boring pop music, an unhappy reminder that the kids who eschewed rock and went to discos were, when it came to the crunch, thick as mince.

Overall rating: * * *
Standout tracks: “Pleasure”, “Gold”, “True”