Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, innovative U.K. alternative group
Curve created a towering monolith of guitar noise, dance tracks, dark goth, and airy melodies. While
Curve achieved a considerable amount of success in the U.K. and on American alternative rock radio during the early '90s, their fan base was generally limited to a cult following. However, their marriage of shoegaze guitar textures and techno beats proved to be a significant influence on countless noise pop, trip-hop, big beat, and dance-rock artists. In particular,
Garbage would find much greater commercial success playing an electronic rock hybrid similar to
Curve, but more accessible and pop-minded.
Curve's two core members -- guitarist
Dean Garcia and vocalist
Toni Halliday -- met through
David Stewart of
Eurythmics.
Halliday met
Stewart while she was a teenager and they remained friends for years;
Garcia played on several
Eurythmics records. The two played together in State of Play, who released one album and two singles in the late '80s to little notice. After the failure of that band,
Garcia and
Halliday parted ways, only to reunite at the beginning of the '90s. Renaming themselves
Curve,
Halliday and
Garcia released three EPs that became independent hits in 1991. Although they were critically acclaimed as well, some members of the U.K. press attacked
Halliday for not being a genuine member of the indie scene. Despite the negative press, their next EP and first album, 1992's Doppelgänger, hit number one on the U.K. indie charts. Pubic Fruit, a U.S.-only compilation of
Curve's first three EPs, was also released in 1992.
By the time of the following year's Cuckoo,
Curve had added two guitarists (
Debbie Smith and Alex Mitchell) and a drummer (Steve Monti), with
Garcia moving to bass. Cuckoo was noisier and more experimental than their previous releases, although it did have a couple of pop songs that were tighter than their usual singles. However, the album didn't make as big of a splash in the U.K. as previous releases;
Curve split several months after its release, only to re-form in 1996 with the Pink Girl with the Blues EP. The full-length
Come Clean followed in 1998 and "Coming Up Roses" became a moderate hit on college radio. Three years later,
Curve issued the Internet-only Open Day at the Hate Fest. This album collected MP3s and B-sides and was a limited-edition package for eager fans awaiting a proper studio album.
After battling contractual obligations with Estupendo/Universal,
Curve returned to form for 2001's
Gift, their fourth album in ten years. Another self-released disc, The New Adventures of Curve, came in 2002, and a two-disc compilation titled The Way of Curve followed in 2004. In January of 2005,
Halliday announced her departure from
Curve, spelling the end of the band. She appeared on
the Killers' 2006 Christmas single "A Great Big Sled," and later started a solo project called
Chatelaine. She also guested on
Orbital's 2012 soundtrack
Pusher.
Garcia started many post-
Curve projects, most notably
SPC ECO, which features his daughter, Rose Berlin. Additionally,
Garcia worked with
KMFDM's
Sascha Konietzko and
Lucia Cifarelli as
KGC, with
kaRIN and Statik of
Collide as
the Secret Meeting, and with Jo Neale as
the Black Holes, among other projects. In 2010,
Curve released an extensive digital compilation titled Rarities and Unreleased. In 2017, 3 Loop Music issued deluxe two-CD remastered editions of Doppelgänger and Cuckoo. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine & Paul Simpson