On his debut album as Pei, ex-Gang Of Youths strummer Joji Malani welcomes us to a world of technicolour indie-pop. Australian Guitar takes a first-class tour
Gang Of Youths frontman David Le aupepe isn’t like other singers. A charismatic man apart, a creative livewire who’s a deep thinker at the same time as being an incessant talker, a militant look-forwarder who has no intention of resting on any of the success his band have achieved over the past decade.
Take this answer to a question about his group’s back catalogue, for instance. “I don’t want to hear the last two albums,” he says. “I want to wake up in a world where they didn’t happen.”
But they did happen, so let’s have a quick recap: Gang Of Youths were formed in Sydney, Australia in 2011 by Le aupepe and some like-minded mates. Within months of their first gig, they’d started to attract a rabid fanbase enraptured by their expansive, widescreen take on indie-rock, the sort of black magic music that manages to feel universal and personal at the same time. They honed this sound over two records, on 2015’s The Positions and 2017’s Go Farther In Lightness,