Curved Air - Second Album

I picked this up in a charity shop in Romford (where I grew up) in the eighties. I was pleased to find it, because I liked Back Street Luv a lot, because my mate’s dad had the single and we used to listen to it.

I didn’t realise until just now that Sonja Kristina, Curved Air's singer, came from Brentwood, which is basically next door to Romford (and is a bit posher!)

Kristina has a great prog voice, kind of white and folky, verging on the operatic. She gives off really bored customer-facing role vibes, but gets away with this by being smoking hot.

The band’s two main characters, Darryl Way and Francis Monkman were experiencing musical differences at the time, which led them to split the sides of the album between them, a split which continued to widen as time went on.

For what it’s worth, I think Way’s side of the album is better.

Back Street Luv is a fucking masterpiece. Florian Pilkington-Miksa’s drumming is so good, the keyboards are throbbing, the guitar has lots of fancy little licks. It’s a perfect backdrop to Kristina’s voice.

Fun fact: Stewart Copeland (Klark Kent, The Police) cut his teeth in a later version of the band. I think you can hear the influence in his later work. He was also married to Sonja Kristina for many years.

The UK version has the die-cut sleeve of die-cut sleeves. It has a kind of cover-booklet-fold out thing going on. Total prog folly, but quite marvelous in its own way. It must have cost them a fortune to make.

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