Marking a significant evolution for the band, Compañero finds frontman and primary songwriter David Le’aupepe looking beyond the deeply personal confessions that have defined much of their catalogue, embracing a broader approach to songwriting through vivid storytelling, classic Americana and an unexpected sense of euphoria. A Spanish noun meaning companion, partner or comrade, Compañero speaks to the connection and shared experience at the heart of the record, while also reflecting its central preoccupation with mortality and the different ways death touches our lives.
After years of mining life's heaviest experiences for music, the band found themselves in a different place. For the first time, things were relatively alright. "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," says violinist and multi-instrumentalist Tom Hobden. "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."
For more than a decade, Gang Of Youths have built their reputation on music that meets life's heaviest experiences with unflinching honesty and towering emotional intensity. Their 2017 breakthrough Go Farther In Lightness debuted at No. 1 in Australia and won four ARIA Awards, while 2022's angel in realtime saw Le'aupepe explore the loss of his father and his own identity through some of the band's most ambitious work to date. In the US, angel in realtime brought Le'aupepe to NPR's All Things Considered with Ari Shapiro and earned a place on Ann Powers' best-of-2022 list for NPR Music.
"I had this realization that I didn't need to channel all this brutality anymore," says Le'aupepe. "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."
After initially struggling with writer's block, Le'aupepe challenged himself to move beyond writing exclusively from personal experience. Inspired by the literary storytelling of Leonard Cohen, Warren Zevon, Tom Waits, David Berman and Bill Callahan, he began exploring new characters and narratives, with a renewed focus on erudite lyrics, tighter structures and classic pop melodies blended with old-school Americana. Much of the initial writing took place in the garden behind Tom Hobden's London home during the summer months, drawing on the dusty highways of the American Southwest, mid-century crooners, the Laurel Canyon folk-rock of the late '60s and early '70s, and the visual language of spaghetti westerns, retro-futurism and surrealism.
The album was recorded across the UK, with sessions at Decoy Studios alongside in-house engineer Robert Sellens and additional sessions at Redchurch, Urchin, Hoxa and Cloud 9, the band's affectionate name for the mini-studio in Hobden's backyard. With Jung Kim primarily producing and engineering, the band recorded as much of the album live as possible.
"We're actually incredibly goofy and light-hearted, and I think we wanted this to be felt in what we made next," says Jung Kim. "The approach was often quite whimsical, leading to uncharted territory sonically." From the arid lounge-pop shuffle of "Desert Life Museum" and the barn-burning "Manilla '98" to the sprawling epic "Future Be Kind," the jazz-pop and baroque art-rock fusion of "This Machine, It's A Classic" and the languid groove of "YeYu," Compañero moves freely between styles without settling into any one genre.
"Real life doesn't dictate anything; it just throws things at you and expects you to trip over them occasionally," says Le'aupepe. "That's how I want to create, and to enjoy my life and my relationships. It's always a process of becoming."
For Gang Of Youths, Compañero is both a companion and a new beginning: an open-ended next chapter that celebrates the beauty of being alive, however complicated, unpredictable or unremarkable that might sometimes be.
Gang Of Youths is Jung Kim, Donnie Borzestowski, Tom Hobden and David Le'aupepe. | 
EMAIL me at AlexLaurence @ AOL (dot) com "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, inf...
INTERVIEW WITH DENNIS COOPER by Alexander Laurence Serial murders have become more prevalent in American Society. Are you ver...