Manchester University

supported by Swervedriver and Tony Monroe...

FACT: TONI Halliday can't dance. She moves with all the half-cocked grace of a wide-eyed kid at a church disco, awkwardly clawing the air and going for momentary shuffles behind the microphone stand. When she stops trying so hard, it's cool: she sways slowly like mascara-smeared idols are meant to - but she always goes back to the stiff-jointed lurch that makes her look like Peter Hooton's glamorous kid sister.

Still, she's happy. Whenever the white face with the hindu dot on its forehead is caught in the spotlights, it fleetingly wears a beaming, blissful grin. Small wonder, really...

The previous night's gig was a disaster; bad sound, so people tell us. Tonight, though, everything's going right. Curve sound like the spectral teutonic dumptruck they're meant to, Toni is wailing with real vigour, and you can sense that the band are suddenly self-assured.

It's not just the improved mechanics, either. Sure, 'Cuckoo' proved to be one of those second albums with a shelf-life of mere weeks, and people accordingly had a hunch that Curve's moment had ended. But then... they go on tour; they play gigs like this one (full college hall, T-shirted disciples, awe-struck ambience); and it becomes obvious that their public is still with them.

First, we have an appointment with Tiny Monroe, the Londoners branded with the enviable mark of a "buzz group". You know why instantly. They carry themselves with a fantastic panache, suggesting a latter-day, guitar-ridden take on the glitz that was once peddled by The Associates and ABC. 'Angel' and 'Creambun' exemplify it: they're full of the same swagger as prime Suede, only they're set in plush hotels rather than sordid back alleys. Tiny Monroe, it seems, are going to be famous.

After such raffish thrills, Swervedriver manage to lead us to a bachelor pad festooned with overflowing ashtrays and copies of 'White Light / White Heat'. It's a nark at first: Adam's voice sounds leaden and lethargic, their descents into week-long solos are crushingly predictable, and they ooze all the grace of a large piece of quarry machinery.

And then they play 'Duel', during which the laziness mutates into alluring world-weariness, the instrumental passages succeed in being mesmerising, and Swervedriver kick in. Two songs later, they deliver a brilliantly charged 'Son Of Mustang Ford' - all breeze-block guitar and buckets of sweat - follow it with 'Rave Down' and scrape a victory. It's only a shame that they continue to look like the most unremarkable band on God's Earth.

Within 15 minutes, we've landed in the Curveworld. Amazingly, Toni and Dean take the stage alone and perform a stark acoustic reading of The Rolling Stones' 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' against a brightly-lit mauve backdrop, eventually thanking us for our applause and showering us with white butterflies...

...A lie of course. They begin, as ever, peering out from dry ice and darkness, sounding like a massacre in a suburban discotheque: crunching drums, a wealth of taped effects, thunderous bass. The same components, needless to say, glue together 'Die Like A Dog', 'Clipped' and 'On The Wheel'. Hey hey hey! One trick band! No songs! No change!

But then they play 'Left Of Mother', a gentle, utterly soothing piece (held together by - wait for it - an acoustic guitar) from 'Cuckoo' that sounds like precisely the kind of thing that the Curve of caricatured perceptions and critical maulings would go nowhere near.

It's succeeded by 'Super Blaster' - trademark Curve, for sure, but an inspired song nonetheless - and 'Missing Link', a rare moment of adrenalin-streaked abandon.

'Cuckoo', unfortunately, returns us to the murky, sub-industrial, tuneless swamp - but once they've played the marvellous 'Coast Is Clear', you begin to grasp the ideal that Curve fall frustratingly short of. It's something like this: Nine Inch Nails playing Blondie songs, sprinkled with enough jarring interludes of energetic lunacy and mournful weepiness to shred any accusations of formulaic boredom.

Right now, they seem satisfied to carry on being the boom-crash-boom-crash bombwagon: eerie, spooked, affecting - but far too like the same ugly boot stamping on your face forever. When you look at the smiles that punctuate Toni's crap dancing, it seems to be doing them fine. But for how long?

review by John Harris (nicked from 'New Musical Express', dated 6 November 1993)