The 1981 Listening Post - Spherical Objects - No Man's Land

 Reviewed by Jim Coursey

Released: October 1981 Spherical Objects No Man's Land Genre: Post-Punk / Blues Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Highlights: One Way Out Jericho “Something’s wrong, too much strain Can’t stop here, just feels so strange I get confused, too much doubt Made up my mind, just one way out" It’s hard not to read Spherical Objects’ final album as autobiographical. Soon after, singer / founder / label-head Steve Solamar would quit the band and label and undergo gender affirming surgery. [1] While Solamar’s romantic lyrics can be cringeworthy (judging from this album and its predecessor), many of the lyrics here that touch upon this particular crossroads feel both deeply real and poignant, as with those from “One Way Out” above. On paper, the lyrics and quality songwriting should lead to a strong album, but sadly this is no lost classic. As Tom Mott writes of 1980’s “Further Ellipses”, Solamar has “a very distinctive voice that might be terrible,” and if I had a quibble with that comment it’s that “might be” is far too kind. If Solamar is comparable to talk-singers, I’d argue that she was only a talk-singer because she didn’t know how to use her voice effectively; she’s actually trying to sing. Solamar’s thick and nasally voice sounds a bit like Mark Edwards of My Dad Is Dead. What differentiates Solamar from Edwards is the range of things she tries with her voice – whoops, hollers, head voice, vibrato, and all sorts of other failed attempts of vocal pizazz. [2] Edwards on the other hand keeps it simple. On the plus side though, this album is far less demanding of Solamar than its predecessor, on which Solamar sounded deeply out of place. Solamar’s issues aside, the band is serviceable but not amazing. Unlike “Further Ellipses”, the music here is a lot more predictably rockish, straddling between bluesy numbers (see “One Way Out”) and somewhat overwrought Television-esque fare (see “Jericho”). The playing and production are fine but fall flat, and certainly lack the feel of good bluesy rock or the distinctively arranged, interlocking guitars of Verlaine and Lloyd. I would love to be more forgiving of this album or her voice but I can’t. I can only give props to the work she did to create an unusual niche in Manchester’s thriving post-punk scene, and wish her the best in her new life. ********** 1. Because Solamar appears to have left public life after gender affirmation, there is no record of her current name. Thus will stick to her professional name (which itself was a stage name), though there is enough biographical data here to confirm her pronoun preferences. https://www.ltmrecordings.com/auteur_labels_object_music_ltmcd2527.html?fbclid=IwAR00ID-CJTQrk1CGY1p2sDIWCtzFGQrBqJ97bIYxr8ZDh8qUqjYt0_D58U4 2. Honestly, she reminds me of my own high school attempts at lead vocals. There may still exist one or two examples of this buried in my home cassette collection but, with good reason, I walked away.