Gang Of Youths have announced new album ‘Compañero’. Check out the exansive new single ‘Benny’s Video’ below along with details of a 2027 North American tour.
Set to arrive on March 12, the album is the follow up to 2022’s ‘Angel in Realtime’ and will feature the single ‘Things Take Time’, which arrived over the summer. Visit here to pre-order.
While the Australian band have usually leaned into darker, heavier themes across their discography, this time around they have approached things from a new angle – leaning into the feeling of connection and shared experiences, as well as how loss can shape our lives in unexpected ways.
The announcement comes alongside the new single ‘Benny’s Video’, which centres around propulsive synths and a tender vocal melody.
“I hate the way you love me, it’s far and away the most excruciating thing about you in this dull-eyed charade,” frontman David Le’aupepe sings softly, as the instrumentals gradually develop around him, building towards the bittersweet chorus: “Last night in a fit of rage, I planned my last days and want to find out how I’d try to take it.”
Across the album, Le’aupepe took inspiration from songwriters including Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits, and used his lyrics to explore new characters and narratives, alongside classic pop melodies and old-school Americana.
“I had this realisation that I didn’t need to channel all this brutality anymore,” he explained. “I used to do that out of some shame about being an artist. But I began looking at my life and experience, and began to think that making art is a worthwhile thing to continue exploring in itself.”
“Real life doesn’t dictate anything; it just throws things at you and expects you to trip over them occasionally,” he added. “That’s how I want to create, and to enjoy my life and my relationships. It’s always a process of becoming.”
Multi-instrumentalist Tom Hobden also spoke about the new approach, sharing: “I think we’ve established by now that mortality and death are never going to be far from the surface of a Gang Of Youths song, but the prism through which they’re observed has shifted.
“You might as well face death with a wry smile, because you can’t outrun it. The darkness doesn’t need to diminish the warmth, and the warmth doesn’t have to disguise the darkness. There’s no reason a record about death shouldn’t also be a celebration of being alive, however ridiculous and unremarkable that might sometimes be.”
The ‘Compañero’ tracklist is
1. ‘This Machine, It’s A Classic’
2. ‘Things Take Time’
3. ‘YeYu’
4. ‘Manilla ’98’
5. ‘Street Value’
6. ‘Desert Life Museum’
7. ‘Benny’s Video’
8. ‘Major Arcana’
9. ‘Ants Control the World’
10. ‘Which Side of the River Are You On?’
11. ‘Future Be Kind’’
Gang Of Youths are set to head on tour across North America in March 2027, with an opening night in Boston. Other shows also include gigs in Brooklyn, Chicago, Portland and more, as well as aslot at Coachella.
Tickets go on sale on Friday November 20 at 10am local time, and pre-sale options open from Wednesday (November 18). Visit here for tickets and find a list of dates below.
Gang Of Youth’s 2027 North American tour dates are:
MARCH
17 – Boston, MA
18 – Brooklyn, NY
20 – Washington, DC
21 – Philadelphia, PA
23 – Toronto, ON
25 – Detroit, MI
27 – Chicago, IL
28 – Minneapolis, MN
30 – Denver, CO
31 – Salt Lake City, UT
APRIL
2 – Seattle, WA
3 – Portland, OR
5 – San Francisco, CA
8 – Sacramento, CA
9 – Indio, CA
13 – Phoenix, AZ
14 – Las Vegas, NV
16 – Indio, CA
In August, Gang Of Youths spoke to NME about their first new music since their 2022 album and how they felt a sense of “philosophical freedom” from writing new material.
“We all live quiet lives,” the singer told us. “We don’t have our own social media, or anything like that. We’re not interested in the public stuff, and I tend to require a lot of respite from the world. Having said that, we’re all kind of ready for it again now. It’s weirdly exciting.”
“The writing now is less and less about trying to find things within myself to deal with, and more and more about things that I notice and that I contemplate,” he continued. “The new songs are, more often than not, about something I’ve observed rather than something I’ve felt. They’re about the external.”
Later this month, the band will kick off a run of UK and European shows, with two dates planned in Paris and Amsterdam, before two shows in Manchester and London at the start of December.