Album Review: 5 Seconds of Summer Traverse 10 Years of Emotion Over 64 Minutes on ‘5SOS5’

The once pop-punk casanovas — now steadily-settled sweethearts — continue refusing to shy away from addressing the inevitable forward movement of time. 5 Seconds of Summer puts out its most introspective, hopeful album as the band goes over the merry, mellow melancholy that accompanies aging’s natural progression.

Written by Arundhati Ghosh

Photo courtesy of Other Half Creative

Crisp autumn leaves’ colors don’t look quite as bright as they once did. The dirt beneath your feet, the clouds above your brow, and the wind that caresses your hair are old friends now, rather than the new playmates they once were. There seem to be more hours in the day and more days in the week, and although the seasons flow together now, you never miss an opportunity for commenting on the most minute shifts in the weather.

5 Seconds of Summer (5SOS), having grown up in the music industry since its mainstream breakthrough in 2014, is aware of this time-passing paradox. Lead vocalist Luke Hemmings succinctly sums up aging on “Take My Hand” from the band’s latest release, 5SOS5; his honest lyricism softened by a wispy, empyrean meld of instrumentals that begin and end within each other: “You fall apart and redefine what keeps you up at night.”

The foursome’s long-awaited fifth studio album — an aptly named one, at that — carries exactly the matured, pensive sound that is now expected of them. 5SOS5 comes after the bridled passion of CALM, which in turn followed the post-angst self-evaluation of Youngblood. These three albums, all released in two-year intervals over the past four years, are both sonically and topically removed from their first two efforts; their boy-band punk self-titled from 2014 and pop-rock album Sounds Good Feels Good from 2015. 5SOS’ newest album demonstrates the band’s continued movement both in music and in life, hammering in an idea that remained latent in its two most recent predecessors: No longer teenagers coming into themselves, stability has started to reign with the band members’ loves and lives.

Since 5SOS’ inception, the members have grown from boys into men, and some of them have gotten engaged and married. Their discography follows a similar sense of learning and changing with age. The recent album’s 16th track, “Flatline,” is practically an antithesis to 5SOS’ early hit “She Looks So Perfect,” with lyrics like “I say, ‘I love you,’ I don't hesitate, hesitate / And now I wanna see you every day, every day” making it clear the days of “ripped skinny jeans lying on the floor” and you and your lover against the world are gone.

In 5SOS5’s second track, “Easy For You To Say,” the lament within the lyrics is backed by a cautiously hopeful thumping bass and airy guitar riffs. Hemmings’ tone is earnest in the pre-chorus as he sings. “Last night, I lied / I looked you in the eyes / I'm scared to find / A piece of peace of mind / I swear to you / Each and every time / I'll try and change my ways.” With some of the most directly thematically applicable lyrics off of an already lyrically-heavy album, the opening stanzas of final single “Older” elucidate this gradual tone and thought process shift best: “I don't wanna get older / Without your head on my shoulder (…) As forever comes closer / Hope the world will spin slower / I don't wanna get older.”

Image courtesy of BMG

Just as their discography follows a linear progression when it comes to physical and emotional maturation, 5SOS5 opens with “COMPLETE MESS,” prompting heavy, near-droning instrumentals that dance on the precipice of swallowing members’ far-away vocals. It is immediately followed by “Easy For You To Say,” in which Hemmings off-handedly comments on having a “youth that was stolen and filled with mistakes.” Tracks near the middle of the album such as “HAZE,” a synth-backed pop song with a weightless, falsetto chorus, and “Best Friends,” a bouncy, nostalgic song balanced out with ever-steady drumming, focus less on the bitterness of what gets lost with age, and more on the sweetness of what is gained. Finally, 5SOS5 closes out with “Bloodhound” and “TEARS!,” the former noting that “I know my life’s just begun” before leading into a classic pop-rock beat, and the latter rounding the listening experience out as a mix of ’80s-style chord progressions and contemporary, repetitive verbiage centered around “just [wanting] to feel alive.”

There is a clear shift from the very coming-of-age, pop-punk “us against the world” implications of the band’s earlier works to the slow realization and steady admission of the fact that, rather, it’s “us within our own world.” Though Youngblood and CALM both conveyed this sense of growing up as they shifted away from the teenage heartbreak, angst, and unruliness that defined 5 Seconds of Summer and Sounds Good Feels Good, 5SOS5 hits it home. The album does not hold the residual reactionism — nor the heavy percussion and twangy bass riding over electric guitar riffs — associated with growing out of young adulthood that characterizes Youngblood tracks such as “Want You Back,” “Lie to Me,” and “Why Won’t You Love Me.”

Nor does it rely on emphasizing vocal clarity rested over soft, fuzzy minor chords in order to give off an essence of stepping back and finally recognizing both the good and the bad in oneself like the songs on CALM, such as “Lover Of Mine,” “Best Years,” and “Kill My Time.” 5SOS5 begins with a muted guitar strum, and ends with an abrupt and instantaneous coming together of rhythm, harmony, and melody. Hemmings, Hood, Irwin, and Clifford take worry, fear, hopelessness, hopefulness, acceptance, and anticipation all in stride, journeying from the end of one chapter of their lives to the beginning of the next.

The album, though simply titled, represents the attainment of nirvana in one of the only ways the living can access: realizing that life shifts and changes around us, and we grow and learn within it. Nobody captures this genuine acceptance of time better than the members themselves do on “CAROUSEL”: “My life's just a carousel spinnin' around / I'd pay again just to keep from stoppin' it now.” 5SOS5 may wrap up neatly at 64 minutes, but its enduring dreaminess and candid lyricism represent the lessons of four lifetimes.