Cuckoo

by Curve

Product Description:

Curve includes: Dean Garcia (vocals, guitar); Toni Halliday (vocals); Monti (drums).

Additional personnel: Sally Herbert (violin).

Recorded at Todal Studios, London, England between December 1992 and March 1993.

Curve's early '90s albums were released on Virgin Records' Charisma subsidiary, but they really should have been signed to the UK indie Too Pure (home of Moonshake, Th' Faith Healers, PJ Harvey and many others). Like the Too Pure bands, Toni Halliday (vocals) and Dean Garcia (keyboards, guitars) mix rock & roll aggression, krautrock obsessiveness, and dance floor beats into an invigoratingly complex hybrid.

Coupling feedback-laced guitars and ticking sequencers, the 10 dark-hued tracks here are a breathless, smoldering rush of barely controlled hysteria. They also get points for turning the title of John Gray's psychobabble tome "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" into a sneering look at sexual politics just before the book's seemingly endless reign in the self-help world of the mid-'90s. Like that song's title, Curve's music was simply a little ahead of its time.