LE’AUPEPE: We used a whole bunch of samples. But the main ones we focused on are indigenous recordings from the Pacific recorded by a wonderful composer, and kind of an adventurer, named David Fanshawe. And his wife Jane has been really amazing in helping us repurpose some of his work. So we’re using a bunch of David Fanshawe recordings. And David Fanshawe, he was English, so he wasn’t indigenous. But he had this belief, I guess a fear, that these really sacred and important oral histories would be lost to time or lost to imperialism or lost to colonialism or lost to capitalism or whatever. So he was very concerned with that, and he wanted to make sure that they were recorded for posterity, for my generation of people, lest something happen, some horrible event that wipes everything out.

Gang of Youths return with Angel in Realtime. The album is about the life and legacy of Dave's father, indigenous identity, death, grief and God. And also the Angel, Islington. You’ve said this song is about how scared you are to bring kids into the world without your dad around. I like the idea of you imagining your kid in the kitchen and there’s this painting of your dad kind of presiding over the family even though he’s not there bodily. Interview: Gang Of Youths & Their Debut LP Release". Life Without Andy. 21 April 2015 . Retrieved 12 July 2023. Brancatisano, Gloria (29 January 2023). "Rolling Stone's 200 Greatest Australian Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone Australia . Retrieved 29 January 2023. Earp, Joseph (12 July 2023). "Album Review: Gang of Youths – The Positions". Renowned for Sound . Retrieved 12 July 2023.If I’m understanding this right, this is about how your dad helped you when you were really on the brink, and helped you many times, and how, as he was dying, you felt like you were able to reciprocate that at last. I understand this is the first song you wrote for the album, while you were in Wellington, New Zealand searching for your brothers? I’ve used this guideline which is the emotion, the feeling of my father gone. This kind of weltschmerz, anhedonia thing I was going through after he died — nothing really makes sense except watching shit TV and walking along the canal in London. But I guess all the anhedonia and weltschmerz is sort of crystallized. And maybe I was able to move past it because I had this very important powerful experience with this wonderful woman. She performed “rongoā” on me, which is this special, traditional healing process. In that moment being embraced by this kind of otherworldly Māori, deeply Polynesian experience, that sort of broke through to me, I think, more than anything before. And this woman was Christian as well. They synchronize a lot of beliefs. They do match up rather nicely, like I said before.

Rod Yates of Rolling Stone Australia said the "record so emotionally bruised and honest that it at times feels like you're listening in on a conversation between frontman Dave Le'aupepe and the girl in question," adding "the album oscillates between Kings of Leon style grandeur, Bruce Springsteen-esque storytelling and sounding like it could fall apart at any second – which, emotionally, is fitting." [14] gang of youths went on to break venue attendance records across australia and led to large international touring with the likes of foo fighters and mumford & sons.

Release

This is inspired by when you went to Samoa, and you had a couple of landmark experiences with your wife, right?

This one is about meeting and falling in love with your wife in New York, and then moving to London with her. Can you talk about the role that she plays within the fabric of the album? You talk about that a bit on the new record, but there's also a spirit to your lyrics that feels rebellious as well. Was that something you always wanted to bring into the band? Angeles, Jana (18 April 2015). "Album Review: Gang of Youths – The Positions (2015 LP)". The AU Review . Retrieved 12 July 2023. I understand this one is about feeling burned out doing a bunch of shows after your father died? That’s what the “I’m only in it for the money!” hook is about. 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.The Positions was recorded over three years, and its sound, according to frontman David Le'aupepe, reflects the struggles he went through in that time: "I went through a marriage breakdown, a suicide attempt, drug problem, and everything during the middle of it so the record reflect a lot of that." He continued: "There’s grime where there should be grime, there’s perfection where there should be perfection." [6] The new sincere, even mentioning that term I suspect will be met with groans and rolling of eyes, which is essentially why the new sincere exists in the first place. It was a reaction to this very commonplace, nihilistic, cynical fiction that had come around in the '90s. Books like Less Than Zero, for example... I suppose there was a sense of fatalism and pessimism, like this Emil Cioran kind of perception that the world was doomed and that we were only alive because we were compelled to be by will. I think the new sincere as a literary movement, loosely, began with Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace trying to channel something was little bit more, I don't know, mushy. Emotional. Emotional sincerely. Something that was predicated more on highlighting the things in our humanity that make us human rather than highlighting the doom and gloom that makes us repulsive. I mean, it’s shattering. And I think that was my like — no matter how much I want to judge this sneaky bastard for concealing all this stuff, he had his reasons… The best thing to do is try to imagine what he might have been thinking. And knowing my dad as well as I did in terms of his day-to-day and his thought process, I think I might have got there in the end. He was a man — he took on projects because I think my dad saw art and beauty as a way of making up for past mistakes. Which may be a flawed approach to living, but in terms of it being an understandable thing, I totally get it. 7. “the kingdom is within you”

You've mentioned in interviews and on the album this idea of the "new sincere." Can you talk about what that idea is and what it means to you? I think there's part of us that clings to anything and everything when we experience crisis. We are so confounded by the implausibility of it all that we tend to look outward. We tend to look beyond. And I argue that we should look inside ourselves and he disagreed, and it was an important and life-changing conversation that I'll remember the rest of my life. Being in the car, talking to him about that. There’s a line you’ve written to sum up the metaphor with Maradona and your father: “Out of shit and villainy there might be something worthy to behold.” I love the idea of paralleling this guy who cheated and then all of the sudden four minutes later he’s playing the game to the best of anyone’s ability. When you started this record, did you go in knowing you wanted to make something so large in scale? VMP: From what I understand, the band met at church. Could you describe a little bit about how that came about?the original vinyl, of which 500 units were made only, has become quite the sought-after item amongst gang of youths fans worldwide, and so on its 5-year anniversary, comes a special edition of let me be clear, on clear vinyl. Yeah, I mean, that's how I grew up! Some [punks] might not agree that it's punk because they're too busy listening to music that is insular or whatever... Because punk has been coopted by kids who want to be cool now instead of kids who had no hope of being cool and had to gravitate toward something that... I like to feel that [the album's] in some ways it's just me, and if that's punk then that's great because that's a scene I loved and was raised in. I'm weary of that title as well because with that four letter word comes a whole litany of really bullshitty, arbitrary, cultural distinctions. Gang of Youths upcoming album 'Angel In Realtime.' comes exclusively pressed to double animated zoetrope picture disc LP's via Blood Records. Limited to just 1500 copies and hand-numbered on a first-come-first-served basis the album is about the life and legacy of Dave's father, indigenous identity, death, grief and God... And also the Angel, Islington. Gang Of Youths Release Video For 'Magnolia' ". Universal Music Publishing Group. 13 August 2015 . Retrieved 13 July 2023.