''Cuckoo'' is the second
studio album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...
by English
alternative rock
Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from Popular culture, mainstre ...
band
Curve
In mathematics, a curve (also called a curved line in older texts) is an object similar to a line (geometry), line, but that does not have to be Linearity, straight.
Intuitively, a curve may be thought of as the trace left by a moving point (ge ...
. It was released on 13 September 1993 and was issued by
Anxious Records
Anxious Records (sometimes typeset as AnXious) was a record label set up by David A. Stewart of Eurythmics, and overseen by Stewart with Infectious Music's Korda Marshall (when Marshall was at BMG/RCA Records). Originally set up as a BMG label, ...
and
Charisma Records
Charisma Records (also known as The Famous Charisma Label) was a British record label founded in 1969 by former journalist Tony Stratton-Smith. He had previously acted as manager for rock bands such as The Nice, the Bonzo Dog Band and Van der ...
. A musically more varied but significantly darker release than Curve's 1992 debut album ''
Doppelgänger
A doppelgänger (), a compound noun formed by combining the two nouns (double) and (walker or goer) (), doppelgaenger or doppelganger is a biologically unrelated look-alike, or a double, of a living person.
In fiction and mythology, a doppelg ...
'', ''Cuckoo'' was less commercially successful than the band's previous releases.
Release
''Cuckoo'' was released in the United Kingdom on 13 September 1993 by
Anxious Records
Anxious Records (sometimes typeset as AnXious) was a record label set up by David A. Stewart of Eurythmics, and overseen by Stewart with Infectious Music's Korda Marshall (when Marshall was at BMG/RCA Records). Originally set up as a BMG label, ...
,
and in the United States on 21 September 1993 by Anxious and
Charisma Records
Charisma Records (also known as The Famous Charisma Label) was a British record label founded in 1969 by former journalist Tony Stratton-Smith. He had previously acted as manager for rock bands such as The Nice, the Bonzo Dog Band and Van der ...
.
Two singles were issued from the album: "
Blackerthreetracker
"Blackerthreetracker" is a single by alternative rock band Curve, preceding the issue of their second studio album, ''Cuckoo''. It was released on 23 August 1993 and it reached #39 in the UK singles chart. It includes the song "Missing Link", the ...
" (which featured the ''Cuckoo'' song "
Missing Link" as its lead track)
on 23 August 1993, and "
Superblaster" on 8 November 1993. In the UK, ''Cuckoo'' underperformed commercially compared to previous Curve releases,
peaking at number 23 on the
UK Albums Chart
The Official Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts C ...
.
Several months after the album's release, Curve disbanded, though they would reform in 1996.
In the August 1996 issue of ''
Select'' magazine, Curve frontwoman
Toni Halliday
Antoinette "Toni" Halliday (born 5 July 1964) is an English musician best known as the lead vocalist, lyricist, and occasional guitarist of the alternative rock band Curve, along with Dean Garcia.
She was also a member of the bands Photofitz, ...
said: "I still think our second album was our best. It got to the point where
Dean
Dean may refer to:
People
* Dean (given name)
* Dean (surname), a surname of Anglo-Saxon English origin
* Dean (South Korean singer), a stage name for singer Kwon Hyuk
* Dean Delannoit, a Belgian singer most known by the mononym Dean
Titles
* ...
didn't want to tour. We did reach that point of hedonistic head-fuckery, glugging
JD, hollering 'Where's the schnozz?' You finally get that out of your system and think, 'This is sad.' We couldn't have gone on like that."
Track listing
Personnel
Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.
Curve
*
Dean Garcia
Dean Garcia (born 3 May 1958) is an English multi-instrumentalist musician, best known as a member of the alternative rock duo Curve from 1990 to 2005. He also released solo work and collaborated with many other artists.
Biography
Garcia was ...
– bass, guitar, drum
programming
*
Toni Halliday
Antoinette "Toni" Halliday (born 5 July 1964) is an English musician best known as the lead vocalist, lyricist, and occasional guitarist of the alternative rock band Curve, along with Dean Garcia.
She was also a member of the bands Photofitz, ...
– vocals
Additional musicians
*
Flood
A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...
– electronics
* Sally Herbert – violin on "Superblaster" and "Left of Mother"
* Alex Mitchell – guitar
* Steve Monti – drums on "Crystal", "Superblaster" and "Sweetest Pie"
*
Alan Moulder
Alan Moulder (born 11 June 1959) is an English record producer, mixing engineer, and audio engineer.
Early life
Moulder was born on 11 June 1959 in Boston, Lincolnshire. He was educated at Boston Grammar School. He had an interest in music from ...
– guitar
*
Steve Osborne
Stephen John "Steve" Osborne (born 1963) is a British record producer, living in Bath, England. He has worked with a wide variety of musicians, including Suede, the B-52s, A-ha, New Order, Elbow, U2, Happy Mondays, Placebo, Gregory Porter, Do ...
– guitar
*
Debbie Smith – guitar
Production
*
Darren Allison
Darren Allison (born May 1968, Ashington, Northumberland, England) is an English record producer, musician, and audio engineer, best known for his production work with artists such as Spiritualized,Kempster, Chris "Studio secrets of the stars ...
–
mixing (assistant)
* Curve –
production
Production may refer to:
Economics and business
* Production (economics)
* Production, the act of manufacturing goods
* Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services)
* Production as a stati ...
* Flood – production
* Alan Moulder – mixing
* Steve Osborne – production on "Unreadable Communication", "Turkey Crossing" and "Cuckoo"
Design
*
Andrew Catlin
Andrew Catlin is an English photographer, artist, director, cinematographer and filmmaker. His work has been widely published, and is included in numerous collections, books, exhibitions and archives.
History
Catlin grew up intrigued by both ar ...
– band photography
* Flat Earth – sleeve design, cover photography
* Vaughan Matthews – cover photography
Charts
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cuckoo (album)
1993 albums
Curve (band) albums
Albums produced by Flood (producer)
Albums produced by Steve Osborne
Charisma Records albums