Thursday, September 9, 2021

The 1981 Listening Post - Au Pairs - Playing With a Different Sex

 Au Pairs - Playing With a Different Sex



#182

May 13 1981

Au Pairs

Playing with a Different Sex

Genre: Post-Wave

3.25 out of 5



Highlights:

We’re So Cool

It’s Obvious


Requisite 80s cover: Bowie’s “Repetition”. I regret to say that this is a song from David’s catalog that doesn’t ring too many bells and in Au Pairs’ hands it’s like New Wave beat scene. I would never have known. It’s kind of boring, though, and it slows down Side One. And then, almost as if they know that they follow it up with their own mid-tempo beat poetry 7 minute opus almost daring you to say, “fuck this” and turn the record over. 

Do that. 


As I search for simile, am I wrong to say that this sounds like the best parts of Talking Heads meets B52s meets The Slits meets Gang of Four? 

This is a pounder of an alternative record. What happened to these people? In an era of Adam and the Ants, Bow Wow Wow and Romeo Void how did Au pairs miss the brass ring? This is a stellar and assured entry into the Newest of Waves. 

But, look at that Bowie cover? For me, the album takes a long time to recover from it and, in the end, there are no songs. Just grooves and chants. 

Even Bow Wow Wow had…you know…songs. 


I know this album was hailed as an unsung masterwork of the post-punk era but, for me, it’s repetitive and boring. 





https://music.apple.com/us/album/stepping-out-of-line-the-anthology/1144804634

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