As the gregarious Le'aupepe says, they aren't exactly humble in their musical ambitions.
"We're not some f***ing slacker, jangle-drone, garage rock band full or irony and self-deprecation. We're not an ultra-cool monochromatic electro band. I don't know really where we fit. We kind of make emotional, very highly literate, indie music ..."
Aside from its wide-horizon sound, the album arrived with quite a back story. Le'aupepe's songs came inspired by upheavals in his personal life - a failed marriage to a woman diagnosed with cancer. He had written them as therapy.
The band, which includes former Hamiltonian Max Dunn on bass, formed around him in 2012. After some of the early songs started gaining traction on radio and online, the band signed to Sony.
Eventually, Positions finally emerged and its cathartic songs started to connect to a growing fanbase. "I think people just wanted to feel something or feel a lot of things and we made a record full of feelings. I think the audience cared because we cared. Maybe that's part of it."
It probably helps that the five-piece have the evidently enigmatic big-voiced big personality Le'aupepe as frontman, though he claims that despite his chosen career, he's shy.
"I am a deeply private introverted person. I am one of the band members who doesn't talk much, but I feel like I am the only person who can talk about the art with as much passion and fervour and enthusiasm that it deserves."
And after such a sadly auspicious start to his songwriting career, what next?
"I don't know. I'll write some shitty political album and fade off into obscurity," he laughs "I think I am going to spend the rest of my life looking for another tragedy."
Who: Gang of Youths
When and where: ACL Spark 1 Stage, 12.30pm
Also: Bodega, Wellington, Friday, March 18
