Gang Of Youths combine humanity and music on 'angel in realtime.'

When Gang Of Youths released Go Farther In Lightness back in 2017, many fans thought they had just witnessed the band share their best work. Of course, that’s only because angel in realtime. was still a few years away.

Having wrapped up 2017 by winning four ARIA Awards (including Album Of The Year) for their second record, Gang Of Youths spent the majority of 2018 and 2019 on the road, touring in support of their critically acclaimed album. But behind all the exuberance of performing to dedicated fans, the seeds of album number three were already being sown.

Moving to the UK, Gang Of Youths had said they were ostensibly on track to release their third album in 2020, though that was before COVID made itself felt across the last two years. As such, the band found themselves forced to hang back a little bit and allowed their music to sit with them and make a natural evolution as its focus, sound, and message became all the more refined.

It was in 2018 that frontman Dave Le’aupepe’s father, Tattersall, passed away at the age of 80. Even in the wake of his death, Gang Of Youths felt that this event would play a powerful role in the creation of the next record.

“Writing from experience is one of our greatest strengths and abilities,” explained Max Dunn in 2018. “To kind of take these huge, fucked-up things like death … and go, ‘This is me being human.’”

Of course, it wasn’t quite as easy as that. It never is easy to bare your soul and go deep into a topic that holds as much power and hurt as that. But the fact is, there was still so much to learn about the story that would ultimately inform the record.

While Le’aupepe would sing of his father’s journey from Samoa to Aotearoa in the ’60s and onto Australia in the ’90s in “tend the garden”, it’s “brothers” that lays it all out on the table. As it turns out, Le’aupepe’s father had an entirely different life prior to Australia, with the Gang Of Youths frontman learning of two older half-brothers in the last few years.

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Though familial secrets aren’t the exclusive territory of Gang Of Youths, it’s the powerful, emotional, and ultimately touching way that the band grapple with these concepts that help an album like angel in realtime. to make its presence truly felt.

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

But while angel in realtime. focuses on dealing with these histories from a modern point of view, it also looks into the past by way of its musical influences. Notably, the record makes heavy usage of a number of samples of indigenous music from the Polynesian islands and the wider South Pacific. Sourced by ethnomusicologist David Fanshawe, these recordings were instrumental in showcasing indigenous music upon their release, in much the same way that the entire record keeps the cultural identity of Samoa and Aotearoa in its foresight.

Ultimately, angel in realtime. arrives not quite as much as a long-awaited, powerful third album from Gang Of Youths, but as an impressive collection of humanity, humility, familial relationships, and how they all connect against the backbone of music.

It’s long been said that Gang Of Youths are one of Australia’s biggest, most successful, and impressive exports, and when you hear an album such as angel in realtime, well, it’s easy to see why that is.

Gang of Youths’ angel in realtime. is out now.