condition (record/cover): NM / EX- (bumped corner and light ring wear) Cleveland new wave band's 1981 debut on Pere Ubu's Faulty Products label. Bob Pfeifer and Myrna Marcarian's male-female vocal interplay over angular, nervy music influenced by Television and Ohio's underground scene. The songs are tightly constructed but emotionally unstable - paranoid lyrics delivered with deadpan humor that barely masks genuine anxiety. Guitars jangle and scrape while the rhythm section maintains constant tension without resolution. The Human Switchboard represented Cleveland's art-damaged take on new wave, too weird and uncomfortable for mainstream success but highly influential on college radio bands throughout the 80s. The Faulty Products connection places them firmly in the Pere Ubu lineage of uncompromising Midwest art-rock.