Amidst the COVID19 pandemic, a set of 5 Seconds of Summer concert tickets sat collecting dust in the drawer that once held my socks but had since changed its career to where my old trinkets go to die. I saved my money to buy physical tickets for myself and my sister to be in the pit for not just 5 Seconds of Summer, whom I had the pleasure of seeing in general admission floor tickets twice prior to my stress in attempting to purchase these two, but also The Band Camino: a new band on the alt-pop charts who were quickly growing in popularity and in my heart. Though I knew this would be a treat for myself, I was more concerned about giving my sister the experience. She spent years sitting by and listening to my recounts of stories from being up close to these artists and had yet to enjoy it herself. The show that was once in April had then been moved to later in the year, then postponed to 2021. Mask mandates had seldom lifted and vaccines had just been introduced, so it was once again rescheduled. Two years after the initial date, a pandemic, an opener change, a new album and another on the horizon, my sister and I found ourselves on the left side of the stage, staring Michael Clifford in the face, and screaming to the songs that hadn’t even been invented at the moment I stress-refreshed LiveNation hoping it would let me purchase the tickets I had been waiting in the queue for 45 minutes to buy. The aforementioned album-on-the-horizon housed the newly released songs we barely had a voice to scream to. 5SOS5 was officially released on September 23rd, 2022. This album had an admittedly different creative process than ones past, noted by drummer Ashton Irwin. While isolation was still necessary for California, the four-piece found themselves writing in Joshua Tree: a national park in the southern part of the state known for its dual-ecosystem landscape. Upon first listening to this album, the influence the park had on this process is obvious. I found this album to be very ethereal, though of this world, and more on the indie genre side of the music industry; something more slightly toned down than their previous release CALM. The more I dissected the tracks, not just for my own listening pleasure or the fact I may have undiagnosed ADHD and need to keep my brain moving at all times, but because I was looking for any likeness I may have to the lyrics, the more I realized the parallels between the content of the album and the people who have continued to support 5 Seconds of Summer through their attempts at genre-bending collaborations and trying to find themselves both as individuals and artists. This is an album that feels grown up; the closest we will ever get to an album written about adulthood, barring the empty literacy of buying a house or filing your taxes. It feels like bridging the gap between the firsthand account of a teenage story to the start of adulthood, a secondhand story that is depicted in the new story of the children this metaphorical couple will have. Complete Mess was the first release from 5SOS5 and during my initial listen, I feared that this would be the first album past the peak. It felt big with gang vocals and the beat before the end of the chorus, after the hook, felt like a long enough pause for a breath of fresh air, but naturally, it had to grow on me. As Take My Hand, then Me, Myself, and I were released, I began to see the light. Despite having already been released, I listened to these tracks again during my first listen to the album as a whole, contrary to my usual habits. I thought it surely had to feel like a story. This is where my understanding of this adult-based record came to fruition. Easy For You To Say feels like a fresh start, like you’re trying to right your wrongs, as if to convince someone of your attempts. Bad Omens illustrates verbal processing to make sense of your own situation just as Caramel feels like a dialogue between two people. Blender feels like an experience you did only for the story, just because in comparison to the other songs it does hold a different capacity. I found begging for resolve in songs like Bleach, Flatline, and Red Line. You Don’t Go To Parties feels like the creation of a scenario, or the vivid recollection of one, but depending on what stage in your life you may be, the context is up for interpretation. If Older is what falling in love feels like, I hate that I didn’t do it sooner. Moodswings, Emotions, and Tears! all spoke to me in the week of its release because that’s the week I had. It’s the week we’ve all been having. Carousel feels like the forbidden task of writing your story as you go and that’s what my final account of this album is. The takeaway, this particular resolve, all of this. It’s writing, recording, and listening back to your story as your life happens to, within, and from you. This was a less “what’s hot on the charts?” album and very clear 5SOS5 is a record that came from the depths of a group of guys that had a life strikingly contrary to the rest of us, but still experience the same situations, consequences, and need for justification just as equally. In retrospect, I felt a sense of unfamiliarity with the men standing on stage in front of me during our show. I watched the strides, instruments in hand, from one side of the venue to the other, and did not recognize who I was looking at. I knew the songs, the breaths, the ad-libs, by heart and I knew this was barely different from when I saw them at 19. However, instead of idolizing the men standing in front of me as if they were the be-all-end-all, it felt truly like we were purely co-existing in the space we were sharing. In the space we had created. And I had no clue this feeling would preface the story the new album exhibits.
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