Gang of Youths Tickets

The poetic, heart 'n' soul Australian indie rockers head back to the UK for 2022

When Gang Of Youths were starting out they played a tiny Melbourne pub with only five people in it – taking the dingy back corner stage like they were playing to 90,000. “We literally played like we were at Wembley Stadium,” the band later told Rolling Stone. Incapable of not giving every show everything they have, that same early energy has shot Gang Of Youths from pub gigs to the stadiums and arenas they always saw themselves in – now returning to the UK in 2022 with a string of March dates to launch their album Angel In Realtime which is out on 25 February 2021.

Gang of Youths say, “the album is about the life and legacy of Dave's father, indigenous identity, death, grief and God. And also the Angel, Islington”.

Despite and indeed because of frontman Dave Le’aupepe’s father’s absence, his influence permeates every talking point that the album offers. At times it’s solely focused upon the precise, personal experiences of loss: the dichotomy of intensity and peace that comes as someone passes through their final days; the overwhelming feeling in the wake of their death that life will never be the same, even if the rest of the world at large remains utterly unchanged.

Following their recent singles, ‘The Angel Of 8th Ave.’, telling of falling in love in a new city and making a home in another, and ‘The Man Himself’, a song created around a sample recording from the island of Mangaia in the Cook Islands that is about living without the guiding hand of your own father, today they release ‘Tend The Garden’.

Although the album is eclectic – influences range from American minimalism and contemporary classical, to drawing upon the legacy of Britain’s alternative/indie scenes, from drum ‘n’ bass to the most transcendent moments of Britpop – it’s equally rooted in Le’aupepe’s Samoan heritage, with the majority of tracks featuring samples from David Fanshawe’s recordings of indigenous music from the Polynesian islands and the wider South Pacific. Angel In Realtime also features contributions from a cast of talented Pasifika and Māori vocalists and instrumentalists.

Le’aupepe says, “I hope the record stands as a monument to the man my father was and remains long after I’m gone myself. He deserved it.”

Gang of Youths are: Dave Le’aupepe (vocals, guitar), Max Dunn (bass), Jung Kim (guitar, keyboards), Donnie Borzestowski (drums) and Tom Hobden (keyboards, guitar, violin).