A Formal Sigh were a New Wave band from Liverpool, England that
formed in 1980 and broke up early in 1982.
Biography
A Formal Sigh formed around the kernel of Mark
Peters (bass guitar) and Flo Sullivan (vocals and keyboards). Robin Surtees (guitar) joined the pair
within days. He was followed, after several auditions and temporary
drummers, by Roger Sinek (drums) and Greg Milton (guitar and bass). Mark
Peters had previously played with The Names (aka The Famous Names).
The band recorded a session for John Peel on
5
September 1981,
in the BBC
Maida Vale 4 studio. Altered Images had been in
the studio the day before. The Peel session was produced by Dale
Griffin, ex-drummer of Mott
the Hoople, and engineered by Mike Robinson. Peel was, in his own
words, ‘rather partial’ to the tape and played it several times,
beginning on 10 September 1981. The session was
also broadcast several times on Radio Merseyside. A Formal Sigh
were for a while the darlings of Merseysound, a high-quality Liverpool
New Wave fanzine,
and were featured twice on its cover.
Apart from the Peel session, only two other sessions were
recorded, 14-15 February 1981 and 6-7 March 1982, both engineered by Peter
Coleman at Session One Studios in
Liverpool. Merseysound released tracks from the first SOS session on
its Tapezine, but no other music from the band was ever released.
A Formal Sigh gigged regularly in Merseyside and the
Northwest. In April 1982 a couple of record companies were just getting
interested in signing the band when Flo Sullivan and Robin Surtees
decided to leave. They went on to form Shiny Two Shiny. Flo later went solo
as Gayna Rose
Madder, and Robin joined members of The Room to form Benny
Profane. Roger Sinek and Greg Milton reverted to their old band name, Barbel, and
continued to play intermittently. Mark Peters emigrated to Australia.
The band took its name from a quotation of Ned Rorem:
‘An artist is like everyone else, only more so; he speaks with a formal
sigh.’
Musical Style
A Formal Sigh was always hard to categorise. The female vocal
format led some to make questionable comparisons with Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Several tracks were redolent of U2. Material ranged from caustic observations of
contemporary political situations (in tracks like "Bleak Intrusion" and
"Ev Rev") to poignantly worded exposés of troubled relationships and
anomie ("There is no Hell" and "Launderette").
External links
