Come Clean

Curve made three albums in just over two years--one of them, PUBIC FRUIT, a compilation of three EPs--before splintering in 1993. Four years later, the duo of Toni Halliday (vocals) and Dean Garcia (keyboards) returned with an unexpected new album which both adapts and abandons the My Bloody Valentine-like miasma of their earlier records.
The enormous UK success of groups like Prodigy and Underworld was not lost on Halliday and Garcia, who here follow those groups' mixture of techno electronic sheen and rock & roll wallop. At times, they follow a bit too closely--the opening single, "Chinese Burn", sounds more than a little like Underworld's "Born Slippy"--and as usual on Curve's albums there's a homogeneity to the sound that stays only barely on the right side of sameyness. But on the whole COME CLEAN is an outstanding example of mid-'90s dance rock with at least two other smolderingly intense songs, "Killer Baby" and "Alligators Getting Up".|