The 2 LPs by seminal early-80s post-punk band Au Pairs are being reissued on vinyl.
Pete Harvey spoke to singer, guitarist, song-writer Lesley Woods for Louder Than Struggle
The primary Au Pairs album Taking part in with a Totally different Intercourse (1981), displays the occasions it was created in. After two years of Thatcher’s authorities, Britain was within the grip of social and political turmoil, marked by deep divisions over race, class, and id. With industrial motion, police brutality, battle within the North of Eire and the best unemployment in fifty years, the nation grappled with rampant racism, widespread gender inequality, and a tradition of intolerance, significantly in direction of LGBTQ+ people.
Taking part in with a Totally different Intercourse (PWADS) dealt head on with the problems of the day, not least of which was the maltreatment of feminine political prisoners in Armagh. The report sounds as recent and confrontational in the present day because it did then. The percussive rush of Jane Munro (bass) and Pete Hammond (drums) helps the chopping, slashing twin guitar assault of Paul Foad and Lesley Woods. Woods’ sprechstimme vocal delivers a payload of ideology, criticism, ardour and ache. I believe this one of many strongest debut albums of the put up punk period.
The opening observe ‘We’re so cool’ offers with the difficulties of negotiating an open relationship. The music units out the Au Pairs stall completely; it’s thematically difficult and laden with imaginative hooks and mantra-like wordplay. Every successive music continues the discourse and explores the outer limits of pop music.
I requested Lesley whether or not The Au Pairs had been fashioned particularly to ship a socio-political message?
“I wished to stand up and play music, I wished to be in a band. However then I didn’t need to sing the boy meets woman pop songs of the day. This was like 40 years in the past, there have been no homosexual artists or not less than none that had been out. There have been quite a lot of issues to be indignant about, there are quite a lot of issues to be indignant about now. There was apartheid there was abortion there have been equal rights and a lady’s proper to decide on There was quite a lot of discrimination and all of the anti-discrimination legal guidelines that we now have now got here into existence within the Nineteen Eighties. Just like the 1979 UK pay act, it’s one factor to have a legislation but it surely takes a very long time for the legislation to seep by and practices which might be endemic in workplaces to alter.”
You possibly can’t learn a evaluation of The Au Pairs with out coming throughout the phrase ‘sexual politics’. You had been one of many few bands immediately addressing these points. How do you assume the songs slot in a contemporary context?
“I believe one of many issues that younger folks should their benefit in the present day is that it’s common for them to reside with dad and mom which have very egalitarian relationships. There’s far much less stereotypical function enjoying, the place mum stays at dwelling and cooks the dinner. Dads cook dinner, dads wash, dads washup, dads play an equal half in working the family.
There’s not that division of labour. These youngsters develop up in these environments and after they go on to have relationships they’ve higher function fashions. There’s much less ‘my father was violent and used to beat my mum up and due to this fact I’ll beat my spouse up’.”
That’s the theme of the Bowie cowl ‘Repetition’, did David ever remark in your model?
“I don’t know, we definitely needed to get his permission to do it and in addition to make use of the Eve Arnold {photograph} of Mongolian ladies doing army coaching on the quilt.”
I learn that the quilt of (the second album) Sense and Sensuality was not permitted by the band? “The place did you learn that?” Wikipedia “Properly, I don’t know the place they received that from, it’s by Kandinsky and so far as I keep in mind all of us permitted it. Martin Culverwell got here up with the inventive concepts and he’d at all times ask us what we considered issues, single covers and so forth.
In distinction to the very important, concentrated, frenetic power of the debut album the second album ‘Sense and Sensuality’ (1982) introduces a wider palette of devices and in my view is a much less profitable report.
“I believe there are some good tracks on it, like ‘Shakedown’,’
I learn that the band had finished 200 gigs previous to moving into the studio the second time and also you had misplaced your voice?
“Sure, my voice was shot. We had monetary constraints and we had been up in opposition to it. It will have been good to have spent extra time, to have had the posh of spending extra time. We weren’t in an excellent place for one cause or t’different. We had been ‘solid asunder’ from one another, we weren’t as tightly bonded. After I have a look at pictures of us within the PWADS days I can see we had been so glad, we had been so glad collectively. A relationship that at that time of time was actually working effectively. After we received to the Sense and Sensuality (S&S) level there had been fairly a number of harmful influences that had received to us individually and we weren’t we had been not tight collectively.”
If there was an Au Pairs ‘recipe’ on PWADS consisting of peculiar tonality, twists of route, stabbing guitars and astonishing percussion. It sounds such as you had been working out of concepts on S&S?
“I believe that’s proper. I used to be like what the fuck shall I write about now? and there was no-one to bounce concepts round with. Lots of these lyrics had been penned within the studio on the fly. I’m not significantly pleased with them they really feel half-worked”
Had the sexual political songs grow to be merely ‘sexual’?
“No, there are political songs on Sense and Sensuality”
The truth is the final three songs on facet two; ‘Stepping out of line’, ‘Shakedown’ and ‘America’ are simply that, starting from the refusal of gender stereotyping through Thatcher and Reagan to America’s violently paranoid international coverage.
“Paranoia in America, I like that and I just like the drums on that. It’s my plan to rewrite it, about Gaza and the Israeli tanks rolling in regardless of the ceasefire.”
American politics are centre stage as soon as once more with the Trump administration busily eradicating human rights from the structure. I discussed the US Supreme courtroom overturning ‘Roe v. Wade’ (1973) and permitting particular person states to control or ban abortion.
“What no-one appears to understand is that the Roe vs Wade ruling was a part of a recognition of a lady’s proper to privateness. Which is a part of your human rights, your proper to a non-public life. The judges stated there’s no proper to abortion within the American structure and have ignored what Roe vs Wade really stated about a person’s constitutional proper to privateness.”
Lesley Woods is passionate and resolute in her function as a spokesperson for human rights. It’s astounding that so many societal issues have remained unsolved for millennia. Lesley distils the fundamentals of those issues right into a single pithy phrase which encapsulates not simply the humanitarian points however the political stance of a gifted and vital British band on the final observe of ‘Taking part in with a Totally different Intercourse’.
“You’re equal however totally different, you’re equal however totally different, it’s apparent.”
Each LPs can be found to order through Music on Vinyl
Taking part in with a Totally different Intercourse launch date: 21 March 2025
Sense and Sensuality launch date: 7 February 2025
Lesley Woods is on Fb. She is supporting Gavin Friday at Earth Theatre, London on 6 April 2025 and gigging in Could with Jerry Harrison & Adrian Belew: Stay In Gentle UK tour
Interview by Pete Harvey
Picture by Mick Geoghegan
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