As Gang of Youths gear up to embark upon the release of album number three, the Australian group took to the stage in their new home of London last week to perform their first live show in close to 18 months for a group of dedicated fans.
Taking place at London’s Lafayette on Thursday, August 12th, the headline show served as the group’s first gig since their appearance at Melbourne’s Down To Earth concert in February of 2020. Having recorded the show to stream it on TikTok overnight, the performance featured a litany of classic tracks and a handful of recently-released singles. However, it also included the first appearance of new song, “Brothers”.
As both Music Feeds and Gang of Youths fan site The Deepest Sighs reports, the ten-song set was punctuated with the appearance of “Brothers”, which saw frontman Dave Le’aupepe take up the piano solo to share a track written about his family coming to terms with the passing of his father.
“This one is about my father, and like many Black and Indigenous men, he has a fractured story,” Le’aupepe explained. “This song is about my dad, my sister, and my two brothers.”
In addition to the performance of “Brothers”, the set opened with “the angel of 8th ave.”, before being followed soon after by the recently-released “unison”. With both tracks appearing on the surprise-released EP total serene last month, Le’aupepe explains that “unison” was one that gave fans an idea of just what the group’s new album would be sounding like.
“‘unison’ is a deeply important track for us that really signals where the music is headed on the new record,” he explained. “I conceived the song in Samoa, my ancestral homeland.
“Here we sample and introduce the work of David Fanshawe, who travelled to the Pacific Islands in the 1980s and recorded the most extensive library of indigenous Pacific music anywhere in the world.”
