Au Pairs

Emerging forcefully onto the post-punk scene through their striking first record, the Au Pairs featured lesbian-feminist Lesley Woods as frontwoman and delivered brittle, dissonant guitar-driven rock that aligned politically and sonically with the Mekons and, most closely, the Gang of Four. Their sound proved danceable, laced with a sharp, almost petulant irony, and for a period remained both fashionable and widely praised by reviewers. In contrast to many contemporaries, the group initially reinforced this appeal through intense, provocative tracks that asserted female sexuality, while also targeting the rightward political shift in England that followed Margaret Thatcher’s arrival as Prime Minister. At times Woods’s dedication to sexual and social issues lent her delivery an inflexible, doctrinaire, and lecturing tone, most evident on the band’s merely adequate follow-up album. Initially, however, the Au Pairs presented a formidable challenge, addressing numerous themes while still producing strong music. Following the uneven 1983 concert recording Live in Berlin, the ensemble disbanded, after which Woods and her colleagues kept a minimal public presence.