Gift

The highlight of Curve's gothic, shoegazing rock has always been Toni Halliday. The duo's female front person possesses a darkly beautiful voice, a gift that on its own could still break hearts. Halliday conveys longing and hardship as smoothly as P.J. Harvey, though she lacks a bit of Harvey's grit. Nonetheless, from the day Curve's debut, Doppelganger, first hit the shelves in 1992, Halliday has been the reason to fall under this band's spell. Almost a decade later, she's lost none of her brooding charm. Gift is a lush electronic album, with quick-shifting dynamics moving under Halliday's honeyed croons. Bass player and programmer Dean Garcia and guest guitarist Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine) crank up the intensity on the effects one minute and strip back to simple beats the next, creating the right amount of tension for Halliday's vocals to rise to the top. The only missteps come when the act gets too close to copping another artist's style: the opening industrial assault on "Hell Above Water" makes them sound like a cheap Nine Inch Nails clone, and "Polaroid" feels stolen from Madonna's Music. Luckily, most of Gift is distinctly the best of Curve: a moody collage of synthetic noise crested by Halliday's otherworldly set of pipes. --Jennifer Maerz