Carrie met Brett Curtin in 4th grade. To hear Carrie tell it, they liked the same girl, so they were enemies. Of course, they became best pals, even singing a song or two in harmony for girls on the playground. That’s where it started.
Cut to ’83, the year Risky Business and The Outsiders ruled movie theaters. Bright, bookish teens Curtin and Carrie (both 17), along with 15-year-old drummer Todd Jewell, holed up in an 8-track studio recording four songs written in Carrie’s boyhood bedroom (“the both of us were very motivated”). Kids still figuring out the ins and outs of playing music and recording. They didn’t have a bassist, so Carrie handled bass, guitar and some keys. Curtin covered all other keyboards. The two sang lead and backup, each already a gifted singer, their pleasing voices swaying effortlessly between gentle persuasion and rising tension.
“Even then we understood our own limitations,” Carrie says decades later. “We learned limitations make you work and grow.”
It’s easy to guess the gems in their teen record collections: OMD, New Order, Psychedelic Furs, Joy Division, the Blue Nile.
Carrie adds, “Brett’s parents were more into the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel. Mine were a generation older, that’s how I got into Danny Kaye as a little kid.”
This is deceptively youthful pop skirting boy-loses-girl formulas, instead diving into adultish themes of longing, loss and self-reflection. Think smart, guitar-driven synth-pop sweetness: the urging “Waves of Passion,” the hands-down beautiful “Mother Father and Son” and “Would You Stay There,” the somber dancer “Here I Wonder.” Heady stuff for a trio of high-cheekboned, clean-cut kids with thoughtfully coiffed locks (more ’80s Gentlemen’s Quarterly and well-groomed English art school than their Sunday best).
It’s hard to believe these songs were never officially released in ’83-’84. Xotics had no idea how good the songs were, or what they were doing. Even if they had, they had no money to get this stuff out. Still, dubs of dubs of cassettes made the rounds in Phoenix, and an excited little reputation grew. They added bassist Adam Burke and guitarist Tony Karaba and gigged high-school shindigs and club stages—where they were too young to otherwise attend—supporting area top draws like Killer Pussy, the Out Crowd and Gentlemen Afterdark. Then Burke bailed for personal reasons.
“When momentum happens, there always seems to be a bass player thing,” Carrie laughs. “When he quit six months later, that was it.”
This wasn’t teenage indifference, Carrie insists, referring to his and Curtin’s motivation. They plowed ahead with the synth-pop of Radio Architecture.
– Liner notes by Brian Jabas Smith
