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player ready...Curve Cuckoo (Virgin) (STAR)(STAR)(STAR)
On “Cuckoo,” Curve’s second full-length release, Toni Halliday delivers a feminist manifesto on the title song, cooing “my mind was bigger than world, my choice was being born a girl.” “Cuckoo” is muddled in pornographic cliches, but Halliday reverses the sexual roles, stripping the act itself to the primal and plain. Just as methodical is Curve’s musical structure-hammering percussion and throbbing bass lines amid a torrent of layered guitars. Improving upon the driving rock of 1991’s “Doppelganger” album, Halliday’s vocals cut a path through Dean Garcia’s dirgelike guitar thicket. In that regard Curve, pioneer in a minor subgenre of female-fronted British rock groups (Lush, My Bloody Valentine), distances itself from the pack, as Halliday’s crispness leads the way.
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