DIAMOND DOGS
| David Bowie
DIAMOND DOGS
Diamond Dogs is the eighth studio album by the English musician David Bowie, released on 24 May 1974 by RCA Records. Thematically, it was a marriage of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and Bowie's own glam-tinged vision of a post-apocalyptic world. Bowie had wanted to make a theatrical production of Orwell's book and began writing material after completing sessions for his 1973 album Pin Ups, but the author's estate denied the rights.] The songs wound up on the second half of Diamond Dogs instead where, as the titles indicated, the Nineteen Eighty-Four theme was prominent. - WIKIPEDIA
Critic Reviews
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pitchfork
2016 - If you measure his albums by how much he calls the shots and actually plays, Diamond Dogs is the Bowie-est one of all.
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Don Ignacio
As a concept album, I've gotta say that Diamond Dogs is far more intricate and well-thought out than Ziggy Stardust was. I really adore this album, and I sit through it quite a bit, but somehow I don't seem to be able to get 100 percent caught up with it as I would like.
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Mark Prindle
Mr. Bowie (nee Jones) has decided to move on from his "Ziggy Stardust" glam period. However, he hasn't come up with anything new to move on TO! So instead, we find ourselves with a piece of work that seems to be somehow based on George Orwell's 1984 literary product (also very successful, I'm told) and sounds like glam music that has been slightly slowed down, made a little bluesier and recorded inside a gym locker at the bottom of the ocean.
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Only Solitaire
David goes kinda serious and real artsy. Sci-fi tinged rock that is still a major point of controversy.
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Adrian Denning
There isn't a weak song here, 'Diamond Dogs' is such a cohesive album.
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Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews
The tunes themselves are endlessly intricate, with weird melodies, crazily distorted guitars, sound effects, and of course some cool lyrics.
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APHORISTIC ALBUM REVIEWS
as a whole Diamond Dogs is less guitar based, weirder, and more drawn out than his previous glam efforts.
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John McFerrin Music Reviews
Overall, I like a good portion of the album, but it's just a drag to try and make it all the way through it in one sitting.
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RollingStone
1974 - The melodies were fascinating and sharply defined. But these tracks are muddy and tuneless, and their sloppiness cannot be rationalized as spontaneity.
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Classic Rock Review
This album is unique and the raw approach has been credited as an early influence of the emerging punk sound.
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ALL MUSIC
David Bowie fired the Spiders from Mars shortly after the release of Pin Ups, but he didn't completely leave the Ziggy Stardust persona behind. Diamond Dogs suffers precisely because of this -- he doesn't know how to move forward.
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PUNKNEWS.ORG
2015 - Diamond Dogs is famously one of the Bowie albums that's really for fans, and it's probably his most utterly distinctive work (even Low sounds like other art-rock albums of the time): melodramatic, raw, challenging, and ambitious even when crammed with catchy songs.
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PPCORN
Originally based on the George Orwell book 1984, Diamond Dogs was a poorly conceived concept album which only housed a couple of viable tracks.
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The Conversation
2017 - Diamond Dogs creates a sense of vertigo, an out-of-kilter state through which we gain access to something sacred. Vocally, Bowie sweeps from a deep register to a soaring falsetto.
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UCR
2015 - not even artistic triumph, chart-dominating singles and impressive album sales (No. 1 in the U.K. and No. 5 in the U.S.) could mask Bowie’s ongoing growing pains on Diamond Dogs. This is why, with decades of hindsight, Diamond Dogs now seems more like the gateway from the Ziggy Stardust era to his Thin White Duke blue-eyed soul period, and beyond.
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The Young Folks
2019 - The term is derived from Bowie’s father’s work with a British children’s charity, as they would often find bands of homeless children living on the roofs of high rises. This juxtaposition of ragtag children living in squalor above London’s Victorian architecture helped inspire Bowie’s world of Diamond Dogs. A political album, it serves as a chant for the wild youth of the future living off broken infrastructure and art crumbs of the past.
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sputnik music
2011 - Diamond Dogs is one of the most important albums David Bowie ever released. It captures him at a rather tangled transitional phase - battling with the glam rock splendour of the past, whilst sowing the tentative soul seeds of the future; of which, would come to dominate Young Americans the following year. Because of its awkward position, Diamond Dogs is album of many contractions; featuring some of Bowie’s finest moments, but at the cost of a disconcerting listening experience for the consumer.
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TREBLE
Diamond Dogs changes in style from one track to the next more than any other album he would record. Yet although disjointed, it remains one of his best due to the strength of the individual tracks.
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Wildfire Reviews
2014 - The album sure is a classic, displaying Bowie on full force. He's rocking, he's swaying and he's producing classical tunes like Rebel Rebel that are hard to forget. His lyrics are more powerful then other, and on this album one can sense Bowie has returned more to the wild side than his previous efforts. Bowie has seemed to go into the dark with this album as well, as many dark themes seem to spread throughout the cd. It's an album well worth listening to, and is enjoyable from beginning to end. It's a must have for any David Bowie fan.
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Robert Christgau
In which a man who has always turned his genuine if unendearing talent for image manipulation to the service of his dubious literary and theatrical gifts evolves from harmless kitsch into pernicious sensationalism. Despite two good songs and some thoughtful (if unhummable) rock sonorities, this is doomsday purveyed from a pleasure dome.
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Bored and Dangerous Blog
Diamond Dogs didn’t hit me as hard as Hunky Dory. But I don’t thinks that’s because one album is better or worse the other. I think it’s more because I had a lot less context and less expectations with Hunky Dory.
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The Afterword
2019 - This album marked the end of Bowie’s glam period – typically, it was time to move on to pastures new and of course many other landmark albums were still to come, but this remains a classic album, and one which also of course has the iconic artwork to match the music.
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LOUDER
2014 - Diamond Dogs clarified that Bowie could outlive Ziggy and Aladdin and confirmed that he was bigger than either. More ambitious, daring, and ridiculously gifted: as a singer, as a musician, as an ideas man.
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