Gang of Youths surprise-release new EP 'Total Serene' (listen)
Gang of Youths recently released their first new song in four years, “The Angel of 8th Ave,” and when Zane Lowe asked about a new album, frontman David Le’aupepe said “It’s done because the caveat is nothing with me, as Tom [Hobden] has found out in the two years, nothing with me is ever done. We actually scrapped the album twice and restarted.”
Still no concrete word on that album, but the band did just surprise-release a new EP, Total Serene, featuring “The Angel of 8th Ave”,” a cover of Elbow’s “Asleep in the Back,” and the new song “Unison.” Compared to the Springsteenian lead single, “Unison” explores the band’s softer side, with programmed beats and a pretty noticeable National influence. David says, “‘Unison’ is a deeply important track for us that really signals where the music is headed on the new record. 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.”
As for the Elbow cover, David adds, “We love Elbow and we thought it was thematically relevant. It couldn’t have been anything other than ‘Asleep in the Back.'”
Stream the full EP below…
