Gang Of Youths’ ‘Angel In Realtime’ Is Wildly Ambitious, And Succeeds At (Nearly) Everything
Sure, 'angel in realtime.' is overstuffed, even suffocating at times - but its power is undeniable.
Gang of Youths frontman David Le’aupepe often tells rooms filled with hundreds of people he believes rock’n’roll music has the power to set you free. The belief is not unusual — it is the commercial and spiritual basis for the ongoing career of AC/DC — but it is remarkable when articulated by a 29-year-old in 2022.
The statement is religious, and feels even more so if you have ever seen Le’aupepe perform. A gyrating, skulking preacher man that dumped his talents into six strings instead of what he calls the “big C church.”
The philosophy is earnest, a word that haunts positive and negative descriptions of Gang of Youths’ music. He’s already on record with the best defence you’ll ever get for this ethos: “If it seems kinda cringe-y and cliché but something that most people, including me, would probably say, it might be OK,” he told Stereogum in a 2018 article headlined ‘Are Gang of Youths Too Earnest for America?’.
That earnestness has been a boon for them in Australia — a live gig market predicated on music festivals that provide devotional crowds. But the thing about any son-of-Springsteen band that comes out rollicking like ‘Thunder Road’ is they tend to mature like him, until they’re driving on a snowed-in ‘Nebraska’ freeway.
Angel in realtime., Gang of Youths’ third album, tries to lead by example showing how the act of making rock music again set Le’aupepe free. The record is inspired by his late father, who passed on in 2018 from illness and left a staggering family secret: Le’aupepe has two brothers living in New Zealand, who thought their father was dead. In finding them, the vocalist discovered he had also been lied to about his heritage.
The identarian revelations ripple through the 77-minute odyssey, traversing illness, an embrace of ancestry, and the complexities of family. The anthemic punk of Gang of Youths’ breakout sophomore record Go Father In Lightness is traded for a limitless genre palette astounding and exhausting in equal measure. Drum ‘n’ bass beats feature prominently over strings (‘unison’), folk guitar is transfigured by synthesiser (‘you in everything’), and Britpop is backed up by Pasifika hymns (‘spirit boy’). It’s nine different stadium rock bands from five different eras stacked into one.
Accordingly, it needs multiple listens, consumed in piecemeal to swallow. The detail in the music is relentless to the point that its individual parts dissolve in the face of each song’s overarching concept. Two versions of the album were recorded and scrapped before settling on the version released on Friday.
Le’aupepe’s vision is best realised in its simplest moment, ‘brothers’. He strips back the musical dreamscape to just piano, and tells the story of his father and unknown brothers with stark, diaristic clarity. Its honesty is crushing, yet without judgment. One quatrain is a contender for the gut-punch of the year:
“He came to meet me at a festival
And he told me everything he knew
That our father left him at the hospital
But if he forgives him, then I should too.”
But scale remains Gang of Youths’ reason for being. If it cannot be quantitatively validated, Gang of Youths will stake a claim to being Australia’s biggest band simply by sounding like Australia’s biggest band. Multi-instrumentalist Tom Hobden, who serves to fill the void left by the 2019 departure of guitarist Joji Malani, is Gang of Youths’ asset in this regard. His violin can sound like Disney or slice like a knife.
When instrumentals get suffocatingly dense, as they often do on angel…, Le’aupepe is able to sell you the final product on charisma. He can sing across instrumentals, his melody parallel to the chaotic churn underneath like Morrissey once did over Johnny Marr’s guitar soundbeds.
Le’aupepe’s strength as a storyteller is what gives the band permission to be so over the top. Sports metaphors are employed throughout the record, a means to break narratives down to their essence — the roles of hero, villain, underdog, and redemption settle naturally. It serves the vocalist’s ongoing self-mythologisation, weaving psalms with soccer.
Le’aupepe’s strength as a storyteller is what gives the band permission to be so over the top.
He’ll work hard to slip in the name of an obscure Tottenham defender, blend in backing vocals from an Australian Formula One driver, or invoke Maradona. ‘Hand of god’ and ‘goal of the century’, which close out the album, turn two infamous football moments into analogues of his father — their poetic sublimity able to represent both his flaws and beauty to Le’aupepe.
The musical density of angel… might make it a pyrrhic victory to a critical ear, but its appeal to the heart is irrepressible. It’s the kind of storytelling that simply makes others feel good to listen to.
A non-authoritative scroll through online comments on Gang of Youths’ latest singles make that evident: “…makes me nostalgic while simultaneously makes me want to accomplish great things…gives me an inexplicable feeling of freedom…makes me want to live in this world when it feels hard to.” So it’s hard to fault Le’aupepe’s love of cliche — though it might be his own will setting people free than merely rock music.
Joshua Martin is a Melbourne-based music and media writer. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaMartJourn.
Photo Credit: Ed Cooke