| Au Pairs | |
| Landscape: | yes |
| Origin: | Birmingham, England |
| Genre: | Post-punk[1] |
| Years Active: | 1978–1983 |
| Past Members: |
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The Au Pairs were a British post-punk band that formed in Birmingham in 1978 and continued until 1983. They produced two studio albums and three singles. Their songs were said to have "contempt for the cliches of contemporary sexual politics"[2] and their music has been compared to that of the Gang of Four and the Young Marble Giants.[3] The band was led by Lesley Woods, who was once described as "one of the most striking women in British rock".[4]
Au Pairs formed in Birmingham in 1978.[5] Their first album, Playing with a Different Sex, is considered a post-punk classic, with strong, sarcastic songs such as "It's Obvious" and "We're So Cool" taking a dry look at gender relations.[5] Other songs, such as "Armagh"—with its refrain, "we don't torture"—criticized the British government's treatment of Irish Republican prisoners during the troubles in Northern Ireland.[5]
In 1980 the band were filmed live for the concert film Urgh! A Music War.
The band's second album, Sense and Sensuality (1982), showed a greater influence of jazz, soul, funk and disco on the band's sound, but was less well received.[6]
Following the departure of bassist Jane Munro in 1983, the band recruited Nick O'Connor who also played piano and synthesizers. At this time the group were further augmented by Jayne Morris (percussion and backing vocals), Graeme Hamilton (trumpet) and Cara Tivey on additional keyboards. The band were scheduled to record a third album with producer Steve Lillywhite in 1983 but broke up. Woods has intimated that the hostility and violence she and other women faced playing music was a factor in the group's demise: "There comes a point where you can’t go on any more at that level," she told Nige Tassell of The Guardian.[7]
Woods formed an all-woman band called the Darlings in the late 1980s, but then left the music industry. Now, as Lesley Longhurst-Woods, she works as a lawyer in London.[8] Guitarist Paul Foad published a guitar technique book, co-written with Stuart Ritchie, titled The Caged Guitarist (2000). Bass player Jane Munro works as an alternative therapist (aromatherapy, reflexology and Indian head massage) in Birmingham. Pete Hammond also remains an active musician and teaches percussion in Birmingham.
In mid-1981 critic Robin Denselow of the London Guardian praised the group's "viciously well-observed lyrics on contemporary life and love and the role of women’.[9]
The Au Pairs toured the United States in 1981. In a review of their first show at the Whisky a Go Go, critic Richard Cromelin said: "When the crowd at the Whisky kept calling Au Pairs back to the stage for encores Wednesday night, it was as if they were trying to tell the group's singer Lesley Woods that her band had done just fine and she could go ahead and loosen up a little."[10]
Writing about their show at The Ritz, John Rockwell said "The Au Pairs blend political lyrics, a tough, funk-dance-rock idiom and an at least initially dispassionate vocal style, rather like the Gang of Four meeting the Young Marble Giants" and suggested that Lesley Woods "and the band were able to build the insinuating monotones of the songs early in the set through street taunts into a rousing rock-and-roll climax."[3]
Music historian Gillian G. Gaar noted in her 2002 She's a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock and Roll (Live Girls) that the band mingled male and female musicians in a revolutionary collaborative way, as part of its outspoken explorations of sexual politics.[11]