With the news that Cherry Red are doing a big Curve reissue, I’ve been wondering: why weren’t they massive? The first 3 Curve EPs (especially Frozen) were immaculate and their debut album, Doppleganger, had at least two brilliant pop tunes. Plus, they sat astride goth, shoegaze and industrial, which seems like the kind of mixture that would attract a lot of fans. Did people not like the Dave Stewart connection, maybe? I don’t know. But Curve were fabulous. And they were also the first band I ever saw live, so I might be biased.
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Didn’t the music press hate them? That would be enough.
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no they were pretty supportive, certainly on the first EPs and first album.
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Weren’t they pretty successful? I remember a lot of folk liking them. I mean not like U2 massive obviously.
Never actually heard them, where should I start?
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Didn’t have many great songs, and their better songs were lea radio friendly.
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Horrorhead
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Thanks. Oh, they don’t sound anything like I assumed they did. Interesting.
Thanks, Am now listening to Doppelganger and having a great time.
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NME were pretty offish from Doppelgänger onwards, though Melody Maker were alright. They were pretty much my favourite band at the time and I was always frustrated by the iffy reviews. Come Clean wasn’t great though.
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this was the root of the problem if you ask me. Could have been a great mix, but they were quite lightweight in all those genres. Not goth enough for the goths, too industrial for the shoegazers, too shoey for the Skinny Puppy crew. I remember being quite disappointed when I heard the first records after all the press hype, just felt like a lot of nothing.
I like them, but they are very pop. They need about 20% more evil.
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Not sure ive ever heard a Curve song
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Maybe if they went a bit more pop they could’ve been bigger, as proven by Garbage?
I always thought Garbage ripped off their sound pretty massively.
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Go wild.
They really do.
Anyone who loves Curve should check out Blindness
And Beth’s new band Where We Sleep.
Both bands feature Debbie Smith on guitar which should be all you need to get you interested.
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This is… bad.
Pubic Fruit (which collects the first three EPs), Doppelgänger and its supporting EPs are essential. Cuckoo marks the start of a shift towards more electronics (On the Wheel and Triumph from the Blackerthreetracker Ep are also great). Come Clean was when they (unsuccessfully in my view) went Industrial. They disbanded then but returned with a series of website distributed tracks and another proper release (Gift) which was actually pretty good.
The Way Of Curve collection has a pretty good spread of tracks across all this period, otherwise go with the essentials above.
They weren’t great live, saw them with Swervedriver (amazing) and Toni’s vocals were totally lost in the noise. Ho Hum. Horrorhead and Colour Hurts still give me goosebumps though.
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Dunno why I never liked them at the time as they should have been in my sweet spot (unless I found them too poppy, bah, which of course is a strong possibility in those days).
Maybe this is a bit tangential/obtuse/random but from where I am now, Just Mustard do everything I guess I hoped Curve would do, better. Need to finally see them whenever the next opportunity arises.
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