Download: Chatelaine (ex-Curve), ‘Head to Head’
Kevin Bronson on
3
True but possibly tangential anecdote: Night before last outside Spaceland I was revisiting a conversation with a friend about how 1992 remains my favorite year in music. It was a great time for my three favorite food groups – rock, power-pop and shoegaze – and no albums from any other year get dusted off more often than the Class of ’92. When I got home and checked my e-mail, I was introduced to Chatelaine, the new project from Toni Halliday of Curve, whose album “Doppelgänger” (which came out on the label founded by the Eurhythmics’ Dave Stewart) was near the top of ’92’s class. Curve were the shoegazers whose dream-pop sound Garbage built on later in the decade; Halliday and collaborator Dean Garcia carried on, with rather hit-or-miss results, until 2005. On Chatelaine’s debut album, “Take a Line for a Walk” (out June 15), Halliday settles into a nice, programming-heavy dream-pop vibe, the songs awash in atmospherics, reverb and orchestration. The leadoff track, the piano ballad “Broken Bones,” gets excellent remix treatments from Kurt Feldman (The Pains of Being Pure at Heart/The Depreciation Guild) and Flood.
||| Download: After the jump, trade your e-mail address for two songs from Chatelaine, “Head to Head” and “Broken Bones (Depreciation Guild remix)”:
Love Curve…can’t wait to hear Toni Halliday’s latest incarnation.
Any discussion of early 90’s shoegaze and Curve has to mention that Toni Halliday is married to Alan Moulder who was very connected to that scene, engineering royalty if there is such a thing.
I love Toni’s voice and the music reminds me a bit of Juliette Commagere but the songs fall a little too easily into AC territory for my tastes. It’s great to hear something from her after such a long time though.
What’s your take on SPC ECO? I’m digging them.
blecch, sounds like a Sarah McLachlan album… it’s ironic how similar it is to her solo stuff before Curve. she and Garcia need each other. every time they try to do something on their own it’s mediocre at best.