CD review: Gang of Youths

The Sydney-based outfit’s follow-up to last year’s breakthrough album The Positions, which earned it five Aria nominations, is more an addendum to that effort than a fresh start.

It remains focused on the grief of frontman Dave Le’aupepe, who  describes it as a bookend to his early 20s, a chapter in which he watched his partner die.

Yes, Let Me Be Clear has its moments of darkness and frustration, yet the group’s trick is to show cracks of light.

Thus the tight guitar squalls of Good Fight give way to staccato rhythms and clean, linear phrasing (Native Tongue), delicate acoustic guitar and synth washes (Still Unbeaten) and a pulsing, defiant closer (Strange Diseases).

• Gang Of Youths. Let Me Be Clear (EP). Sony.
• Four stars (out of five)

Single download: A Sudden Light
For those who like: The National, Brandon Flowers

— Shane Gilchrist