February 4, 2022 by A.S. Van Dorston

Feminist post-punk that sparked vicious blowback, and is still ahead of it’s time.

It wasn’t easy to follow up an exciting debut in the punk era. Bands were caught between conservative expectations to repeat themselves, and also to evolve, but only just so. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, and if you were the Damned (Music For Pleasure, 1977), you were critically brutalized to the point of breaking up. Some, like the Damned, licked their wounds, got back together and triumphed, others (The Jam, Siouxsie & the Banshees) persevered and triumphed. Au Pairs unfortunately broke up, and it’s a damn shame. Check out Robert Christgau’s bludgeoning:

“The renown of this sorry punk-funk gone pop-jazz is as depressing as anything in the annals of Anglophilia. Lesley Woods’s line on free love is as priggish as the rest of her leftism and her separate-but-equal rhythm section couldn’t make the earth move if one of them played tractor. Don’t blame me for the metaphor, either–it’s Lesley’s, by way of famed protofeminist E. Hemingway, which proves that she’s either open-minded or just plain dumb. Not since the Stranglers has a Brit group sexed it up so unconvincingly.”

Their songs are full of dry wit that just keeps their seething feminist rage from boiling over. They don’t have to be sexy for you, you dumb fuck. This is especially rich coming from a Boomer who has spent the past few decades patting himself on the back for his enlightened feminism. Au Pairs were the only ones to be subjected to such abuse and misunderstanding. The Slits, The Raincoats, Rip+Rig+Panic suffered too. In retrospect the criticisms seem to be a steaming pile of misogynist bullshit. While Au Pairs’ debut Playing With A Different Sex (1981) was clearly influenced by Gang Of Four, it was also accessible and funny – Pylon with sharper teeth. It was only natural for them to evolve their sound, augmented with icy synths in “Stepping Out Of Line” used tastefully by Magazine, and adding jazzy brass instrumentation on “That’s When It’s Worth It” and bonus track “Beat of a Machine” that align with The Jam’s concurrent sophisti-pop explorations.

40 years later the album is nearly forgotten, though it has been reissued a couple times. It’s influence is apparent in at least a handful of artists who owe a debt to this band. The 2002 Castle remaster supposedly corrects an issue with the original being mastered at the wrong speed. The result is slower and less frenetic. To me it sounds as fresh and relevantly fierce as ever.