Mojos
Saturday, May 30, 2015
A humbled yet energetic Gang Of Youths performed to a sold-out Saturday night Mojo’s crowd and you couldn’t help but feel the band needed a bigger stage. From the get-go the vocals from frontman, David Le’aupepe, were more than enough to fill a venue three times its size. With both onstage flair and arena style vocals that at times resembled a young Brandon Flowers.
The rest of the band followed closely, dancing across the stage all night with energy that accompanied the high levels of passion, a true reflection of their very personal debut album, The Positions. Labelled by Le’aupepe as the “cancer album”, its content embarks on a journey that puts you in grim position of looking after a love one who’s battling cancer.
With Restraint And Release kicking off the night, Le’aupepe showed some love to the harbor city exclaiming, ‘Fremantle’s a paradise, I don’t say this about every city, either’ and adding how humble he and the band were to be there. Poison Drums came next with ample amounts of head banging by the whole band, with Benevolence Riots delivering moments of emotional war cries from Le’aupepe who clearly wanted the crowd to believe every bit of the song’s context as much as he did.
Knuckles White Dry was delivered next as a solo, producing a lighters-in-the-air moment, with a passionate expression on Le’aupepe’s face that created an emotional connection with himself and the crowd throughout. Radio Face delivered yet again more hard-hitting energy before Magnolia saw the band turn it up another notch with Le’aupepe leaping into the crowd, getting them off their feet (if they hadn’t been already).
Leaving the stage and coming back for an encore, what followed was the crowd pleaser of the night with the band delivering a cover of LCD Soundsystem’s All My Friends, best-known by fans for their triple j Like A Version take on the song, believed by many to be one of the segment’s best covers of 2014. Gang Of Youths delivered it perfectly yet again, with guitars raised in the air as well as an emotional head-on-head moment between lead guitarist Joji Malani and Le’aupepe.
It was only fitting that the band finished off in such a way, rounding off what had been a night of energetic, emotional and personal moments. Expect Gang Of Youths to do big things in the coming years.
BEN DILLON
