Circle In The Round

AFTER THREE years out of the spotlight, Toni Halliday and Dean Garcia are back. That s right: Curve, the band who once excited and delighted audiences in Europe and America with their particular icy blend of goth, rock and dance beats, have reformed. And that s not all. They have a brand new album, the rather spiffing Come Clean, ready for release, and are playing their first Irish show in over five years.
It s been going amazingly well, actually unbelievably. We did our first show last night and the reception was just fantastic. On the phone from the US of A, the honey-voiced Toni Halliday sounds a little surprised by just how well things have been going for Curve since their decision to relight the creative flame that brought tunes like Horror Head and Wish You Were Dead to our attention in the early 90s.
Describing the music created by Halliday and her musical partner Dean Garcia is not an easy task. The closest I can come is industrial-gothic-big-beat-indie rock , and that only describes about half of it. The band first surfaced in 1991, with a string of fantastic EPs, followed by two albums, 1992 s Doppelgdnger and Cuckoo the following year. During this period, they toured incessantly and then abruptly disappeared off the musical map, some thought forever.
True innovators to the last, their blend of loud guitars and big beats, combined with Halliday s unique vocals (this woman is capable of switching from a snarl to a purr in the course of one line), saw them hailed as the godfathers of dance-rock crossover. Some feared they would go down in history as being more famous for influencing a plethora of acts than for doing it in their own right. But hopefully, the release of their third album, Come Clean, will redress the balance. I put it to Toni that popular music, in a sense, has caught up with them.
We always wanted to do things to do with the future, she muses. We didn t want a retro sound we didn t want to go back to the past because it s already been done, and done very well. We were only interested in creating a sound for the future.
Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of listening to tracks like Coast Is Clear or Fait Accompli will testify that Curve were always a band ahead of their time, and popular music has taken quite a few years to catch up, in the shape of acts like The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy.
So, after two reasonably successful albums, why the prolonged sabbatical? We were shadows of our former selves, confesses the London singer with a wry laugh. We d been constantly touring. We only took two months out from touring to make an album.
So, physically and emotionally drained, Toni and Dean parted ways, but she maintains that they still remained friends during the interim period. There is no big story about Dean and I hating each other s guts, she says. We were always in contact. There was no rift. I d call around for a cup of tea or we d have dinner together, stuff like that.
It was while Toni was visiting Dean that he happened to play her a song he had been working on, and that was the catalyst for the rebirth of Curve. It was time, she says simply. We were ready again. Toni admits that she initially needed a lot of convincing to reform the band, but that it was definitely worth it.
I felt that if any of the work we did sounded like Doppelgdnger, then we re not doing it, she says. You have to move on.
Come Clean certainly differs substantially from Doppelgdnger and indeed Cuckoo, but it is still unmistakably Curve. The opening track, Chinese Burn comes on like an onrushing juggernaut and proceeds to get even heavier as the beats are turned up and the equipment sounds like it s starting to melt. I have to admit, when I played it on my walkman for the first time, it hit me like a kick in the teeth.
Toni describes Come Clean as a logical extension to what went before. The singer reveals that while the tendency with their previous material was to hide the vocals and much of the melody behind a wall of guitar, this time round they re not scared to have the vocals more upfront.
Before, I was scared that anyone would hear what I was talking about, she admits. We would just cover it up with maybe 20 tracks of guitars. I think we were running away from ourselves to an extent. Now, I don t mind if people hear me. We re not frightened any more.
Come Clean was produced by Bomb The Bass mainman Tim Simenon, which is something of a departure for the band who previously worked mainly with Flood. Tim doesn t play anything he s a DJ, so that was very different, Toni says of the man they tagged The Gardener because he successfully weeded out their collection of over 30 new songs into the 13 that eventually made it onto the album.
Toni is philosophical when it comes to Curve s potential for material success. I don t know how massive Curve can be. I don t know if we can sell 15 million albums, because we re not bland enough, she says. People want that; 95% of the population want that and that s not an exaggeration. For so many people, music is just something on the radio when you re in the car.
Blandness, though, is something that Halliday and Garcia can never be accused of. Having said that, Curve were initially, and to my mind, unfairly, lumped in with the whole shoegazing scene, where bands spend more time examining the stage floorboards than trying to entertain their audience. It s a label that Toni now rejects.
If we were one of those bands, we d never have been as successful touring-wise as we were. None of those bands were they couldn t get arrested, she says with a laugh. Especially here in America, where people pay a lot of money to see you and they re expecting a night out.
Certainly, Curve have always been renowned for their explosive live shows, and, if memory serves me correctly, the audience at their early 90s gig in McGonagle s included members from local hopefuls, U2. You can check out Curve s new material for yourself when they play the Red Box on April 27th. n