Album Review: Gang Of Youths - The Positions

Sydney band Gang of Youths pull out all the stops for their debut album, The Positions.

The ten songs found on the record flood well over the five-minute mark, trailing off into one another, lead singer Dave Leaupepe’s songwriting seemingly endless in its inspiration. Rarely does a writer arrive with such a concrete vision for their art, but Leaupepe bursts onto the scene with a powerful story to tell.

The press release for this album made waves. “I was in a four-year relationship with a girl who had a terminal illness and then I made a concept album about it with my friends,” it read. Everything else you could want to know about the story is better found in Leaupepe’s voice.

The pain is most obvious in songs like Knuckles White Dry, landing near the middle of the album. It’s the quietest moment on The Positions, but somehow manages to be the most raw. Leaupepe sits by the piano and you can here it creak as he sings the lines “If I hear another ‘I love you, get well’ from someone we don’t know or that I didn’t tell, then I swear that I’ll show them a vision of hell; it gets tiresome you know.”

This weariness could weigh the album down, but instead Leaupepe writes some of the most empowering sentiments to be found in modern rock music. “Though our pulses never change, I think that we should try,” he sings on Sjamboksa. The band has received many comparisons, but no one else is making music this earnest.