Opening with the tongue-in-cheek "We're So Cool," the Au Pairs ' debut record is a stunner, from Lesley Woods ' scratchy guitar and declamatory vocals to lead guitarist Paul Foad 's brittle soloing. This is an uncompromising, defiant record: gender roles are turned upside down, as are theories about sex and sexuality, and hetero- and homosexual relationships are put under a microscope. Similarly, the tense political situation in Northern Ireland is harrowingly addressed in "Armagh," which details Tory-sanctioned torture and sexual abuse of wrongly imprisoned Irish women. An unflinching look at the world, Playing with a Different Sex is one of the great, and perhaps forgotten, post-punk records. AllMusic relies heavily on JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to use the site fully.