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Firsties and Faves with Gang of Youths, Plus Watch New Video "Restraint & Release"

What happens when your 19-year-old girlfriend is diagnosed with cancer? You write some songs to work through it, and when it all goes tits up you write a bunch more.

Love and pain, hate and heartache, and hard fucking times. This is the stuff that fuels all the best art. Just take a look at School of Seven Bells' story. Gang of Youths's singer David Le'aupepe was 19 when he came face-to-face with tragedy: his then girlfriend was diagnosed with cancer so he decided to write a bunch of songs to make her feel better while she was in the hospital. These songs, penned in a time of heightened emotion then went on to have a new life as part of GoY's debut album The Positions, a killer collection with moments of string-laden grandiosity ("Kansas," "Magnolia"—ironically, given its uplifting tones, about hitting rock bottom), and anthemic, 90s-angled indie rock, on "Restraint & Release" (about the disintegration of said relationship—check out the premiere of the tour-clip compiled video below). Similarly, the singer's unusual childhood, raised in an evangelical Christian household contributed more lyrical grist ("Poison Drum"). As his relationship began to fracture (more on which below), Le'aupepe turned to songwriting once more. In short: Life is very real and poignantly captured on this debut. He wield his honesty like a weapon.

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It's music to take you through the tough times, the confusing shit, music that recalls peak-era U2 and a smidge of Springsteen too, and when it was released in Le'aupepe's home country earlier this year, the debut garnered five ARIA award nods—Austrlia's equivelant of the Grammys. Not bad going of a guy who's still two years shy of his 25th birthday.

In any case, watch the band's new video and find out more about them via Le'aupepe's firsties and faves.

First fist fight:
The first of many to follow happened in the third grade with some interminable dipshit whose name now escapes me. He was a lot bigger and probably would have kicked my ass if I hadn’t blacked out and had my juvenile Berserker moment. I vaguely remember head-butting him and laying the hammer to his mouth so many times my hand started bleeding, which sounds barbaric, but there’s only so many times a kid can be called a bitch before they lose sight of civility. Anyway, I hope he enjoyed the taste of my blood—he’s probably a hedge fund manager or something now so I guess in the end he’s the real winner.

Favorite song to cry to:
I don’t think I have a song that I cry to per se, but when I wanna feel some shit I chuck on Feist’s cover of “Now At Last” or Linda Ronstadt’s version “Feels Like Home.” I know I don’t go here, I just have a lot of feelings.

First heartbreak:
The first time was the last time and it was recent and unbelievably convoluted. I went through a veritable catastro-fuck of a relationship breakdown signaling the temporary end of my sanity and the beginning of the weirdest transitional phase of my life. During the seven months I spent trying to save the relationship I traversed the strange and uncomfortable territory between being apoplectic with rage and easily manipulated with very little finesse. In any case, I wouldn’t say she broke my heart as much as she unapologetically ripped it still-beating from my ribcage, doused it in chili oil and oregano and spit roast the motherfucker until it was crispy brown. Then she drop punted it into a fucking electrified shark tank. True love.

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Favorite sensation:
Pop rocks on the back of my tongue or collapsing into bed after a long, shitty day. I’m basic and sentimental. How many people do you think resist the urge to just say “orgasms” on this question? I considered it but to be fair, and even though pop rocks are a righteous fucking mouthgasm, I didn’t feel like taking the low-road.

[Ed's note: actually no one's ever said orgasms but someone shoulda done by now!]

First drug:
Alcohol, then prescription medication, then pot, in that precise order—all of them kinda fun and all of them completely over-fucking-rated. Booze is the Regina George of substance—it’s a life ruiner.

Favorite drunk food:
No milk, no pause, just Fruit Loops. First success:
I was the antipodean equivalent of a student body president in 6th grade, which sounds cool and trust me, it was. The wine, the women, motorcades. The bunga bungas, the orgiastic coke parties, I miss it all. That was when politics were pure—the sweet spot between power and progress.

First music you fell in love with:
In Australia there’s a music TV program called rage, and the best time to watch rage is late on a Friday or Saturday night. When I was a little one my older sister and I would camp out in the living room almost every weekend for years and watch it until we fell asleep. My most vivid musical memory is seeing the video clip for “Sweet Child O' Mine” and that was enough to turn me into a raging fogey that makes guitar music. To this day I’m mawkishly proud that the first song I truly loved of my own volition was that one.

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Favorite teenage experience:
Fourteen-years-old, holding hands with the first girl I ever really liked watching Iggy & The Stooges after jumping the fence to the festival.

First piece of advice you ignored:
"Don’t get married at 21, you’ll just get divorced." I got married at 21 and then got divorced. Idiot.

Favorite fictional crush:
In real life, I’m unrelenting in my attraction to nerdy, uncomplicated women whom invariably think I’m a raging dickhead. In fantasy-land, Claire Cleary from Wedding Crashers is just the right combination of snarky, positively down-to-earth and ethereally dreamlike to make me wistful. If not her then then Mary in About Time. I’ve made three to Rachel McAdams and I think the universe is trying to tell me I have unrealistic expectations and I’ll never be happy.

Favorite person:
Apparently Rachel McAdams.

The Positions is out now. Gang of Youths' new EP is coming in early 2016.