Masterful Introspection, Calum Hood’s Soul-Bearing Debut Album: ORDER chaos ORDER
After over a decade of making music with his brothers in 5 Seconds of Summer, today marks the release of Calum Hood’s shimmering debut solo album, ORDER chaos ORDER.
With the familiar vocals of your favourite bassist lending themselves to an entirely new soundscape, and the creative force behind so much of the band’s iconic music, Hood takes his storytelling to a different depth with this new body of work. While normally writing in collaboration with his bandmates, Hood has used the opportunity of solo writing to hone particularly personal narratives and explore old feelings with new emotional resilience, gained from the unusual silence of writing in solitude.
Opening with Don’t Forget You Love Me, the first single to welcome in his solo era, the perfect blend of devastating honesty and surprisingly nostalgic pop immediately pulls you in. Accompanied by the release of a cinematic video, showing Calum perched on the end of a bed, the early order starts to get disrupted, as the walls close in and chaos descends on his current reality. Directed by long-time friend and 5SOS creative Andy Deluca, this first video offered an aesthetic insight to the psychedelic yet introspective narrative to be painted by the album in its entirety.
The entanglement between clarity and confusion is perfectly contained through the second of the previously released tracks Call Me When You Know Better. It offers alternating perspectives between a type of self-pity born from another’s confused feelings, and reflection on how you could have been a better influence, a more present source in someone else’s life. This contemplative intimacy carries through the entire album, making it a perfect soundtrack for a sentimental sunset drive.
The first of the new tracks, Sweetdreams, takes a turn toward the heavier themes explored within its lyrics. In discussion with Rolling Stone Calum shares how Sweetdreams was inspired by “..a lot of people who have been in servitude to a lot of things that aren’t great for them.” It touches on the idea of tunnel vision and clinging to things that feel like they fill you with quick joy, even if the end result is not a lasting peace.
A deathly duo comes mid-way through the album. Sunsetter touches on the fragility of the human experience. It’s about that moment of realisation of how fortunate you are to be in a dream of a romantic scene with someone special, preserving this for as long as possible, all while knowing it could be ripped from you in a matter of seconds. The simple production and layered vocals through the pre-chorus, and reverberant guitars throughout slip you into a heavenly state, one which will ultimately pull you back in again and again. All My Affection brings you back to a humbling reality, written in part for Calum’s beloved companion, Duke. It touches on readying yourself to surrender entirely to someone you love, to give up everything you have to protect and care for them. Particularly intriguing is the duality between being in the public eye, constantly surrounded by people expecting so much from you, versus the affection of a companion who knows none of that world, craving nothing but your time and love.
Following in the footsteps of his bandmates, Hood is the last of the 5SOS members to go solo. The band’s drummer Ashton Irwin took the first leap with his solo album Superbloom in 2020, swiftly followed by frontman Luke Hemmings in 2021, both also releasing follow-up work in 2024. Just last month guitarist Michael Clifford announced the release of his debut single Cool, with an album due for release later this summer. The resilience of a band that allows the freedom to create music with or without their collective title reflects an incredibly supportive bond, a dynamic few could understand.
The rulebook on solo music marking the end of a band’s career has been thrown into the vortex, at least as far as 5 Seconds of Summer is concerned. They all knew their time was coming to explore solo projects but strongly emphasise that they “still really want the band to be our home”. The biggest part of their musical identity remaining tied to the career, and everything they have created together. For four teenagers plucked out of their normal school lives in Sydney, and then catapulted into the limelight, it is easy to understand the bond forged through an incredibly surreal experience, one only they can truly comprehend the magnitude of from the inside. A part of feeling the creative freedom to write as solo artists stems from the desire to keep the band with a healthy love for what they do. Gone are the days of their early career of producing albums amidst the tornado of touring the world. A band’s longevity comes from extended rest cycles, and having creative outlets outside of the group, especially as the now late twenty somethings enter new phases of life.
The constant noise in every manner of speaking created from the band’s fourteen-year whirlwind career has grounded Hood. Spiritual themes are threaded through multiple tracks on the album, most clear in the record’s finale, Three of Swords. A four and a half minute minimally produced track that ends with a closing segment that sounds like a slip into a stream of consciousness, “Did you imagine when we were younger.. I wouldn’t see you for what felt like a thousand years.” It contradicts the dreamy life of the singer living in his new home city in LA, versus the longing to be home, reunited with his family, and the life he knew of before fame. His family brings him back to a childlike state of purity, before the industry’s challenges left their mark.
One track sure to spark conversation among his fanbase is Dark Circles. Inspired by the mind-bending movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the track explores a reality where the band never formed. “I don’t feel myself when you’re not around”, one of the lines that stands alone and captures the loneliness and abandoned sense of self that comes from picturing a different version of himself. There is only gratitude for the life he has built with his band, and a jarring type of dread that comes from imagining what would have happened if the decisions they made as teenagers didn’t bring them into each others’ lives. Hood says it’s his way of saying to his bandmates that “You guys make up so much of my DNA and the person that I am today”, unimaginable to think of the person and life that would have resulted without them.
A far cry from the music you know and love from 5 Seconds of Summer, the intriguing mind of Hood has delivered a stunningly mature sound. Diving headfirst into personal narratives too specific to explore through his usually collaborative songwriting process, the introspection allows a new strength of character to shine. He has a special ability to guide the listener on a personal journey through the most vulnerable of thoughts. Order chaos Order is a unique experience, one that will have you pondering your own existence, and the fragile nature of your human experiences. A personal triumph for Calum that is sure to resonate deeply with fans far and wide.
