Songfacts®:

• Gang of Youths is a rock group from Sydney, Australia. Their second longplayer, Go Farther In Lightness, debuted at #1 on the ARIA Albums Chart and won Album Of The Year at the ARIA Music Awards of 2017. This cathartic rock number, released on June 15, 2021, is their first single since. The band's lead singer, Dave Le'aupepe, told Apple Music it showcases "a newfound economy with harmony, structure and lyric" and "conserves a kind of grandiose bombast and complexity while using as few chords as possible."
• Gang of Youths actually wrote "The Angel of 8th Ave" in the late 2010s. Le'aupepe told ABC it underwent "15 versions" before landing on what is "about as close to what people would have Gang of Youths as in 2017, when we did our last anything."
  
  They decided in the end to stick closely to the successful formula they used for their first two albums. "I think we just needed people to hear something initially that was a reminder of what we were," Le'aupepe said. "Before we took them on this journey that could be polarizing, that uses a lot more breadth of musicality and eclecticism as opposed to what we were known for about 6-7 years."
• The song tells the story of Le'aupepe's relationship with his wife, Courtney Bray. He starts off by recounting how they first met when the singer was visiting his sister in New York City. At the time, he was struggling with mental health issues.
  
  I fell hard upon the weightless weeks
  And wasted every day
  Till you emerged in the park
  Like some patron of Washington Square
  
  They fell in love, and Courtney helped Le'aupepe overcome his emotional turmoil. She then helped the Aussie frontman nurse his ailing father until he died in 2018
  And when my old man was near to the end.
  
  You loved his broken body
  In the same way that I did
  
  The second verse and chorus is set in London where Gang of Youths later relocated. Le'aupepe and Courtney moved into a home in Angel, Islington, where she continues to be his "angel."
  
  And in the Islington morn
  You're the angel of 8th
  And what's more, the goddamn greatest thing
  That Laney ever made
• Le'aupepe told NME the song is about falling in love and finding a new life in a new city together. "It's my story, but we wanted it to feel like a more broad spectrum of love and the two major cities that played a big part in mine and my wife's life," he added. "There's always going to be poetry with love in the big city, and the metropolis is like a microcosm for a global human experience no matter where."
• The London-based filmmaker Joel Barney directed the video, filming it in Angel. His other credits include Greg (2018) and Dreamlike State of Sorrow (2019).
• Gang of Youths stopped by Stephen Colbert's The Late Show to give the song its US TV debut on December 1, 2021.