The Blindfold EP is simply and easily the most brilliant and surprising record we've heard in well over a year. It has us staggering for adjectives and reaching for Sutherland's infamous "mind's eye gibberish".

We'll do our damnedest to be sober and say that the girl who sings (we have no idea what she's called) is gifted with Deborah Harry's bitchiness, Sinead's rage, Rose Carlotti's perversity, Harriet Wheeler's sensitivity and Liz Cocteau's timeless glow. She's doubly fortunate in that the rest of Curve are able to do things with their guitars and beatboxes that can set alight the skies then extinguish them at will.

There are four songs here, each an astonishingly great popsong, and each of them, from the furious psychedelic fire of the first to the final last-laugh lovesong is wildly different in mood and pace. Like Ride, the only real comparison that springs to mind, Curve can demolish and rebuild themselves in the course of one song. And, like Ride, they do write real songs.

Ultimately though Curve are Curve. Ultimately... well, ultimately nothing. We're lost for words. Just buy it.

Shit, we've just discovered the single's not coming out until the beginning of March. Looks like you'll have to wait a while. Pay the gas bill instead.

Single of the Week

review by The Stud Brothers (nicked from 'Melody Maker', dated 9 February 1991)