How Gang of Youths Took a ‘Whole Different Approach’ With New Era

Gang of Youths are back.

This is not a drill.

The chart-topping, multiple ARIA Award winners have emerged from hibernation with “Things Take Time” (via Mosy Recordings / Sony Music Australia / RCA U.K. and Arista U.S.), the alternative rock act’s first new music in four years.

Written by bandmates David Le’aupepe, Tom Hobden, Donnie Borzestowski and Jung Kim, “Things Take Time,” with its orchestral flourishes, is a mature, more mellow version of a band that cut its teeth in Sydney’s pub scene, and, by 2017 , had moved into position as one of Australia’s preeminent rock bands.

“Things Take Time” is a meditation on patience, and the swings and roundabouts that are the playground of life.

Of growth, decay, and regrowth.

“It’s in it’s namesake, but it took a f—ing long time to make a three-minute song,” Kim tells Billboard with a laugh.

“It took three years to make a three-minute song.” Then, “lightning struck” and the thunder followed as Le’aupepe reached into his bag of tricks, chords came, and the song flowed.

GoY’s third and most recent studio album, 2022’s Angel in Realtime , gave the band a second consecutive leader on the ARIA Albums Chart.

The collection, which went on to win triple j’s coveted J Award for Australian album of the year, was loaded with textures and ideas on “Indigenous heritage and identity, family, god, life, death, grief, sport, forgiveness, and the Angel Islington,” Le’aupepe said at the time.

This next project is coming from a different place.

“The lyrical content is quite a departure,” says Hobden.

“Records of old have obviously been centered around some very, very personal topics for him.

And then suddenly he’s facing an album where he doesn’t really know what the lyrical thread is.