Unwrapping an abundance of turbulent passion and intense beauty, Curve gracefully offer their most profound release to date with their seventh album, Gift.

For over 10 years, the unstoppable British duo of Toni Halliday and Dean Garcia have successfully balanced emotional substance with musical style. Assertive guitars, grooving beats and vibrant electronics complement the mesmerising vocals of Toni Halliday, as Gift emphasises a crisper production and perhaps Curve's catchiest melodies yet. And if getting Gift wasn't enough, the duo have also released the internet only album, Open Day at the Hatefest, a compilation of Curve material spanning from 1996 - 2001. Generous, giving, and completing each other sentences, Toni and Dean share their thoughts on Gift, as well as the direction of Curve.

How do you think Gift compares to your previous release, Come Clean?

Dean: It's a step up from that one I think, and it's kind of gone full circle. With Come Clean, I think we were experimenting in an area that we hadn't gone before, and with Gift we went back again on ourselves rather than experimenting too much with things that we weren't sure of. It's like a full circle.

Toni: I think we spent longer on the songs with Gift. We've gotten used to the fact that for us to sound like Curve is not a bad thing actually. We like to sound like Curve because we are Curve. I think we concentrated more on making sure that the songs were just good songs with good melodies, because Ben Grosse was going to be mixing it. He's an American from Detroit, and we knew he was going to be mixing it in a far more American kind of way, which meant that the vocals were going to be louder and that you were actually going to be able to hear the songs. They had to be better songs so we stopped spending lots of time fiddling around with things in experimental areas and just got on with the business of actually putting a good record together.

Dean: Exactly... using everything that we had known before and pulling it all together.

Gift feels much more confident and polished as well...

Dean: I think it was the recording process, the way we used different technologies, and that it was mixed by Ben as well. It's got a different kind of sound, because on Come Clean, Alan [Moulder] did most of them...

Toni: They have that English edge...

Dean: Yeah...rough.

Toni: Rough and kind of harsh, even though Alan didn't mix "Chinese Burn." It was mixed by Steve Osborne, and he's still English. And the English have this kind of, if you're going to drop a guitar in, don't fuck around, drop it in. So when the guitar would come in, it would take your brain out. With Ben, he still dropped the guitars in really heavy, but he EQ'ed them in a more rounded, warmer way rather than a bright way. I think the record sounds warmer.

Is that why you chose Ben to mix Gift?

Dean: We wanted to work with somebody that was different for this record. We felt we wanted to move on, write some good songs, and then bring in somebody different to get the best out of the songs.

Toni: He had done this Filter album that we really liked, and we're also really good friends with his girlfriend Saffron from the band Republica. He did their track "Ready to Go," which is just a perfect moment in pop. It had this real energy to it, and all the guitars and programming of that track were really up-front. We really loved the way that it was knitted together.

Dean: Ben understands the mix between the real and technology. He's very good with technology, but he also needs that humanist input. Because we combine that very much so, he was a good choice.

How involved are each of you in the recording process?

Toni: Dean and I do the majority of the stuff of ourselves first and we always bring someone in when it's like 95% done...

Dean: when we are really confident with a song...

Toni: and we're confident with the production, but it just needs finishing off to make it sparkly. Dean and I were in the studio every single day with Ben. Even when he mixed, we were there. I flew out to LA and I was there every single day, going. "What EQ have you got on that?"

Dean: We're very active at all stages of it. We like to be involved, because if you're not involved, your record is going to come out sounding different than what you expected, and you are going to be disappointed. So we guide it as much as we can right down to the actual mastering of it. We're both there until we've got the final thing done, we know exactly what it's going to sound like, and we're happy with it. Bands that don't attend those things are going to come up with problems I think. We certainly would.

I noticed Alan Moulder did a lot less on this album than usual...

Toni: It's because Alan was very busy though. Alan was working with Nine lnch Nails. If he had been hanging around the studio when we were in there, we would have written a song and gone, "C'mon Al, play some guitar." If he's not there, then Dean plays it. Alan was less involved with Come Clean as well, even though he mixed it. On Doppelgänger and Cuckoo, he was heavily involved in playing guitars and Dean would utilise him as a musician...

Dean: because his work was very London based in those days. And in the last four or five years, he's been much more in America. Sometimes we don't all come together at the same time.

Toni: We are his favourite band in the whole world. We are! (laughs) And it's not just because I'm married to him.

You mentioned that your music has come full circle. Did you have that idea in mind when you wrote the songs for Gift?

Toni: No, we never have any idea. It just sort of happened to be like that. It's only now in hindsight that we can look back on it and go, "Well, that's what it is, that's what the difference is, and that's what the change is." When we were actually doing it, I think we were being just as intense as we normally are. I don't think we've ever made a record with any intentional kind of thing in mind. We've never had a concept.

Dean: We might start off a track with something inspired by something, but there's never really a theme which runs throughout all of them. We try to concentrate more on the writing.

Toni: The overall mood of Gift is very liberating. Even though it's got some dark and intense bits to it, it's just got this sense of relief that we finally - in terms of the way that it is, the way that it sounds, and the way that it was written - feel comfortable with who we are. We're not in this dichotomy anymore and always struggling against the obvious. So it's got this feeling of relief and enlightenment, and fabulous things. We just moved on from that overt angst. It's a lighter mood for Curve.

The lyrics of Perish" seem especially personal. Is there a story behind that song?

Toni: Hmmm... there's nothing that relates to me or Dean, I don't think.

Dean: People can just relate to the words in that song. A lot of people are stuck in something for the wrong reasons. Everybody goes through this thing, don't they? That's what it says to me anyway. Sometimes you're in this position...

Toni: and you ask that question, "Why am I staying in this? Because I'm scared." I think it's just delving into that part of the human psyche. It's suggestive rather than actually being a definite thing.

Was there a specific inspiration for "Want More Need Less?"

Toni: Well, I believe in every single word in it. It's true, because I do "want fun and feeling." I do "want to be good and gracious." I do want all those things and I think everyone does really. And the more that I want it, the less that I need it (chuckles), because you are already there. If you really strive for something that much, you usually have it already because you are inclined that way mentally. You're inquisitive, and so it's usually there already. So there's no real thing behind it. All the songs just come out! (laughs) With that track, we did some music that we really liked and there was no melody on it. Dean went home, came back the next morning, and for some reason I'd put this sequence of words on it, but I have absolutely no idea why. And I don't really question it either. I suppose in a way, I'm scared of questioning where something comes from when I don't know where it comes from, because I think I might lose it.

Dean: People struggle really hard to get something great, and often by just not struggling at all. People always say that when they think too hard, it doesn't happen. We wanted to make something wonderful and fantastic, and it's very difficult if you are so microscopically critical of yourself...

Toni: that nothing actually comes out, because you think everything is crap.

Dean: Exactly, you've got to be in the right space, and it just hits you.

Toni: I've always seen writing as something that comes from another place, and I'm just a conduit... I just write it down, whatever it being said to me at any given point really. I've been given a voice as a singer, but I have no idea where it's actually coming from. I kind of like it that way.

When you look back at your lyrics, have their meanings changed over time?

Toni: Time does change the things. They do take on different meanings, but I don't think is has necessarily to do with things that have gone on in the world. I look back now at some of the songs we wrote at the beginning, and when I listen to them now, as a person that's 10 years older than the person who wrote that at the time, it has a really different meaning. I think, "God, that's really weird. Where did that come from? What was I thinking?" At the time, those things come out arid it gels with a song really well. Then years later, time changes that. I think that's the nature of poetry, books, film... anything that has dialogue.

The artwork for Gift is quite a bit different from your past albums...

Dean: It was done by different people. I wasn't sure when I first saw it, but now I love the sleeve actually. It reminds me of a classic, early 80s New Order or...

Toni: Joy Division!

Dean: It's quite minimal and there's not much on there. We just wanted it to be really plain, like a tile.

Is there a reason why you chose Gift for the album title?

Dean: We don't know really, do we? It's normally a song title as the album title... all of them have been like that. It's like following a tradition really. There's no particular reason for it... I don't think. But we did think of it as a gift, the whole thing...

Toni: because we had to fight really hard to get this record out. I'm not saying our situation is any different than any other band with the current climate and the way that record companies are run at the moment, which is basically by a bunch of accountants and lawyers. There's nobody in the music industry left now who actually loves music. They just looked at our sales figures and went, "Hmmm... not sure if we're going to put this next record out." We had to really fight. So we feel it was a real testament to the music on our record that someone at one of the labels at Universal put their hand up. Someone who didn't know anything about us, didn't know anything about the band, never even met us, put their hand up and said, "We love that. We are putting it out." Because, we signed to Universal just before they did their first merger. And then when we delivered this next record, they were doing their second merger with Vivendi in France. So our record just got lost in the loop of merger after merger. But we fought hard and we got it out... that's what's important. So it is a gift, really.

(article nicked from Outburn, January 2002)