The Slough Festival

Upton Court Park, Slough

This is a big night for CURVE. This is the chance they needed to prove to all the doubters that they belong. Suspicion's been rife in the rock rags over the last few weeks that Curve's miraculous arrival, fully formed and instantly successful, smacks of surreptitious goings-on. People feel they might have been conned - that the music they love to think is made instinctively, in the heat of the inspired moment, has been somehow calculated and manufactured to cash in on The Scene. Eurythmic Dave Stewart's shadowy presence in the band's history memories of Toni solo career. The Studs' argument is, who gives a f*** if the band was put together by a producer if the records are great? I'm prepared to hang fire and chuckle at the irony of the band being preceded on stage by Bowie's "Golden Years".

I sent Bowie a tape of The Scene a few weeks ago with a few Curve tracks on it and he wrote back on the back of a jigsaw of Michelangelo's David to say he thought it made "nice dinner music" but was "a little iffy". Shame he isn't here tonight. Curve are nowhere near iffy.

From the violent new "Think And Act" to the final tense crackle of "Ten Little Girls", Curve are a storm. Offstage, sipping a beer in the guest area, hiding behind mirror shades, Toni's disappointingly unprepossessing - not at all the goddess of many a Maker photo session. But once the band starts gnashing, she assumes a taut authority. Like vintage Debbie Harry, she smiles her displeasure which is most disconcerting and keeps the crowd enthralled.

Their set seems brutally short but, with the wicked JC001 ranting behind her, Toni expresses and achieves more than all the day's previous bands put together. Curve have the lot: a punk anger, a Goth death mystique and The Scene's wilful obscurity. Whatever their origins, whatever their motives, their appeal is irresistible.

review by Steve Sutherland (nicked from 'Melody Maker', dated 3 August 1991)