The Au Pairs - Stepping Out of Line: The Anthology (2006)

This review kicks off yet another rating system here at The Snilch Report. I realized that we needed to have a special place in hell for the music industry's magic revenue bullet: the compilation.

Now compilations have varying degrees of value: on the one end are those 10-song "Millennium Compilations" for the casual fan; at the other are the completely remastered box sets with both an exhaustive recap of the band's official releases and lots of unreleased extras. Some of these are necessary summations of a band's career; others are attempts to bleed a few extra dollars from the revenue stone. (Here's a hint: it's usually the latter.)

Thus my latest creation: The Compilation Ripoff Index. It consists of two components -- the casual fan summary (which ideally is high) and the hardcore fan ripoff factor (which ideally is low). When the ripoff factor is high, usually it's because there's one unreleased song or demo added to a compilation which is otherwise the same crap you already own. (For an example of this, please refer to "Love, Courtney" and reference "Nirvana.")

So we will start with an example of a great compilation: The Au Pairs' Stepping Out of Line: The Anthology. I had never heard of these guys until I watched the 1981 movie, Urgh! A Music War, which is a bunch of New Wave acts performing one song each. Now I was primarily interested in seeing The Police, X, Gang of Four, The Go-Go's, Wall of Voodoo, Devo, Pere Ubu, Gary Numan, and the big draw, XTC on stage from back in the day. (Aside: Why is XTC live a big deal, you ask? Andrew Partridge, the lead singer of XTC, suffered a mental breakdown on stage at a show in 1982 and has never appeared live since, despite still releasing albums even today. Seeing Andrew Partridge sharing the mic with Sting for "So Lonely" at the end of the movie is worth the price of admission alone.)

So The Au Pairs were not even on my radar going in. I'm not sure exactly what it was about their performance... but there was an energy and an electricity that was undeniable. I read about them on allmusic.com, and then went out and picked up this compilation, which is absolutely great.

Their story is very interesting -- they released Playing With a Different Sex in 1980, Sense and Sensibility in 1982, and were recording a 3rd album in 1983 when lead singer Lesley Woods went to Morocco for a vacation... and never came back. (Well, she did eventually.) Of course, they supposedly had played 285 live shows in 1982 and got ripped off by their record label, which could very easily drive any group over the edge. In fact, the rest of the group remain in touch except for Lesley, who dropped out of the business altogether to become a barrister in England, and has maintained a very very low profile for the last 15 years.

Think of The Au Pairs as the Gang of Four if they were fronted by a radical feminist. Big bass lines up front, a very funk-inspired rhythm section, choppy guitars, and Woods' great voice. Playing With a Different Sex (Disc 1) is a great album. It starts out very strong with "We're So Cool", and the tempos vary from there: they even throw in a little reggae-type rhythm ala The Slits at points. Other highlights are "Come Again" and "It's Obvious." What makes this disc is the extras: for example, the album version of "It's Obvious" is excellent, but the stripped-down A-side single version (also the disc) is an all-time great song. Six words that say so much:

You're equal but different
You're equal but different
You're equal but different
You're equal but different
You're equal but different
You're equal but different
You're equal but different
You're equal but different
It's obvious
It's obvious
It's obvious
It's obvious

Sometimes simple is better.

Disc 2 (Sense and Sensibility) has some great songs too ("Stepping Out of Line," "Shakedown," "Intact," "Don't Lie Back") and it's a rare example where a band steps out of the skin of album 1 and into new but interesting territory in album 2: this album reflects more of the jazzy/funk influences than its predecessor, and holds up well. And you get the 1983 demos, which honestly are not all that great but with some work... who knows. It would have been interesting to hear how the 3rd album turned out.

Compilation Ripoff Index: This passes the test for both casual and hardcore fans. It has both their proper studio albums in full, plus four demos from what would have been their third album, plus EP and BBC studio tracks, and compiles singles tracks. Hell, they even throw their original 1979 EP in here. All in all, it's basically every track they ever recorded -- how can you beat that in a 2 disc set? Value for the casual fan is high, ripoff rating for hardcore fans is low, giving it an "excellent" in the compilation index.

CD Placement: Car CD Changer.

- Snilch