Continuing our stay Glasgow this week for the TRNSMT festival in Glasgow and featuring the Australian Indie upstarts Gang Of Youths on closing day, Sunday July 10 and broadcast by BBC 6 Music.
Gang of Youths are an Australian alternative rock group from Sydney based in London. The band consists of principal songwriter David Le’aupepe (lead vocals, guitar), Max Dunn (bass guitar), Jung Kim (lead guitar, keyboards), Donnie Borzestowski (drums), and Tom Hobden (violin, keyboards, guitar). Kim is Korean-American, Dunn is from New Zealand, Borzestowski is Polish-Australian, Hobden is British, while Le’aupepe is of Samoan and Austrian-Jewish descent. They are mostly known for their 2017 single “Let Me Down Easy” which became their first top 50 single in Australia. Their debut album, The Positions, peaked at No. 5 on the ARIA Albums Chart in May 2015 and was nominated for multiple ARIA Awards.
Their second album, Go Farther In Lightness, debuted at No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart in August 2017 and was nominated for eight awards at the ARIA Music Awards of 2017, winning four: Album Of The Year, Best Group, Best Rock Album and Producer of the Year (alongside Adrian Breakspear for his production on the album).
Their third studio album, Angel in Realtime, was released on 25 February 2022, debuting at No 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart in Australia and No. 10 on the UK Albums Chart.
In October 2020, the band began posting footage to Instagram of them recording their as-yet-untitled third album. A self- produced single “The Angel of 8th Ave.” was released on 15 June 2021, and it was announced that an EP was due for release in July 2021. In an interview with NME, Le’aupepe said they had “scrapped 2 versions of the album,” and it would be released “at some point in the next year or so”. A three-track EP, total serene, was released on 16 July 2021.
On 10 November 2021, the band announced their third album Angel in Realtime, which was released on 25 February 2022, alongside a world tour and single “Tend The Garden”. On 1 December 2021, the band’s performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert aired, where they premiered the song “The Angel of 8th Ave”.
On 20 May 2022, the band surprise released their third EP, Immolation Tape. It contains three early demos of songs on Angel in Realtime – “In the Wake of Your Leave”, “Forbearance” and “Spirit Boy”, as well as a cover of “Shot in the Arm” by Wilco.
Here they are at TRNSMT from this past weekend – crank it up and forget about Hump Day.