While Curve are usually named in the second tier of first-wave shoegaze bands, they haven’t gotten the same level of respect as their ’90s peers, despite arguably just as groundbreaking. They embraced electronic and dance textures earlier than most, and frontwoman Toni Halliday’s sexy/scary charisma set the template for many alt.rock rocks to follow.

A large part of it, I suspect, is that their ’90s catalog – which consisting of 1991’s Doppelgänger and 1993’s Cuckoo, is only two deep – doesn’t appear on the usual streaming services and are also long out of print. They split in 1994 and reconvened in 1996 – how quaint that two years off was once considered a split – but of the three records that followed, 2001’s Gift is the only one on streaming; in 2022, the existence of 1997’s Come Clean and 2002’s swan song The New Adventures Of Curve seem apocryphal at best. For my part, I haven’t heard either of the first two records since I owned physical copies some 20-plus years ago. Were they to receive a vinyl repress at some point (Doppelgänger got limited one in 2017, but copies run into the triple figures), I’d probably bite but otherwise…

But otherwise there is Bandcamp. As it turns out, the band’s entire catalog – singles and remixes and all – are available on Bandcamp in digital form at quite reasonable prices. I’ve enjoyed revisiting their first two records and may, at some point, check out their later offerings to see if their being forgotten is a shame or deserved.

In any case, I was originally just going to post the video for second Doppelgänger single “Horror Head” with a “Curve – can’t hear em anywhere!” but that’s not actually true.