Here Lies.... - Betty Curse

It's a testament to how greatly the Betty Curse experiment flopped that her album was released in October 2006 (download only, with a physical release earlier this year), and here we are, in August of the following year, before I even realised the album was out. Ok that's not strictly true; I was aware in general that the album was being released to cash in on the Halloween season but having never seen anything about it since, nor ever seen a copy of it in the shops, I forgot about it entirely until a recent chance occurrence.

The big question has to be then, was I missing anything?

Well, as ever, the answer is yes and no.

Am I any more convinced months down the line that this is nothing more than an elaborate play act from the former Megan Burns? Well no, but neither does that make some of the tracks any the less catchy. Artifice is not necessarily the tool of the devil you know.

There are catchy choruses to burn (God This Hurts, Rot In Heaven, Excuse All The Blood) and Curse can belt them out with energetic pop aplomb. Indeed, if the songs ever did get mainstream airplay, you certainly wouldn't be turning your radio off when they came on.

But in all that lies the problem with the whole project. It's "goth" approach doesn't entirely convince, which may have been the problem in appealing to the target audience and even if it did, the out and out "pop" splendour of some of the tracks would have a hard time gaining favour with the eyeliner-heavy crowd it professes to appeal to.

That said, I quite like it. But I can also see why it's lack of success was, in hindsight, all too obvious.