Taken from Issue 26 of 10 Men Australia - TRANSFORMATION, EVOLVE, JOY - on newsstands in Australia on September 18.

Calum Hood has learned that he can do whatever he wants. This year, that has included releasing his impressive, sonically layered and intricately lyrical debut solo album, Order Chaos Order. After spending 14 years in one of Australia’s most successful exports of all time, the pop-rock band 5 Seconds of Summer, the 29-year-old musician is starting a new chapter of artistic freedom and has found a renewed love of music.

In 2011, the four members of 5 Seconds of Summer were in high school, uploading covers of songs to YouTube, like Blink 182’s I Miss You and Wheatus’s Teenage Dirtbag. The latter video was discovered by One Direction member Louis Tomlinson, which led to 5SOS receiving the ultimate golden ticket: opening for One Direction’s arena and stadium tours around the US, UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand over the course of two years. Naturally, the shows created legions of diehard fangirls around the globe, who to this day have tattoos of the original 5SOS logos and religiously follow their favourite members. To those who can recite the 5SOS lore by heart, none of this is new information, but it’s all part of what has made Hood, the band’s bassist, the artist he is today. “[The band] shaped everything,” he says on the set of his 10 Men Australia cover story. “It’s hard to know who I would be without it. Maybe my core is the same but it’s opened my mind a lot more in terms of how I view people. It’s softened my view on humans and humanity because I have been able to see the realness of how music affects people.”

Hood’s musical journey began when he was a kid, when his family would come together and play. “A couple uncles on guitars… everyone would get hammered and sing songs. That was my introduction to music, and I feel like it’s still like that now with my family, which is nice.”

Born in the Sydney suburb Mount Druitt to a Scottish father and Māori mother, he began learning the guitar and singing at 14, primarily using YouTube videos. His older sister Mali-Koa is also a musician – and his biggest hero. “I remember back then seeing a lot of acoustic covers, finding my first favourite bands and artists and wanting to play those songs myself. It was a lot of Green Day and Blink-182, but also songwriters like John Mayer.” Hood met fellow 5SOS members, lead vocalist Luke Hemmings and lead guitarist Michael Clifford, in high school – drummer Ashton Irwin joined in late 2011 as the final member. “We didn’t think about things that much back then. It was very innocent. We were just having fun and it felt good to sing and play.”

Their biggest challenge was figuring out an identity and turning their YouTube following into a real, live audience. Their first show was at Sydney’s famed Annandale Hotel pub, with 12 people in the audience. “One of our main ambitions was to put on a good live show, to become renowned for the live show. We would constantly practise in the dark. There’s that 10,000-hour rule before you can master something [created by the author Malcolm Gladwell, who suggested in his book Outliers: The Story of Success that investing that much time in honing a skill can achieve expertise].”

After being found by Tomlinson, the band signed to Capitol Records, relocated to Los Angeles, where they’re still based, and began to release record-breaking albums and sell out global tours. A multitude of devotees around the world that tracked the band from city to city meant intense hysteria followed them. “We had a good support system around us,” Hood says. “I don’t know how receptive I was to people who were checking in. They would subtly try to ask if everything was okay. We had our families and each was there, but I should probably have been going to therapy. I don’t think I was really open to that then.”

The band toured relentlessly for years in a row. “The biggest thing we took with us was the work ethic, especially coming from lower-middle-class working families. We just knew what it took to work hard because that’s what we had been exposed to. With Australian artists there is a tenacity to get up and keep going. There were a lot of opportunities but you need a certain amount of luck as well.” To date, 5 Seconds of Summer have achieved four number one albums in Australia, sold more than 10 million albums worldwide and two million concert tickets, have 18.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify and their songs have been streamed more than 11 billion times.

That success and a long-lasting, unwaveringly loyal fanbase has made it possible for the members to release their highly anticipated, predestined-for-success solo music. Hood is the final member to release his. Order Chaos Order, which hit #1 on the ARIA Albums Chart in Australia, is a vulnerable look into his true sonic identity: a shoegazey, dream-pop, alt-pop immersion grounded in ’90s indie references. It’s moody, cinematic and thoughtful, and from its debut single, Don’t Forget You Love Me, it caught our attention. It was Hood’s Depeche Mode-esque vocals that threw him into a new stratosphere. It marked new territory and a new chapter for him as a musician, with subtle nods to his impressive references.

“After being in a band for so long, I realised that being a musician needs to be a choice,” he says. “I want it to be a choice. In the same way you choose to be in a relationship, I want to choose to be a musician and be proactive about my decisions of how I can sustain that for myself. Also, it scared the shit out of me to think about doing it. That’s usually a good thing, though there’s obviously a stigma around doing this and the band never getting back together. But it was also an ego thing for me, like, oh, maybe I’ll get left behind. When Ash first released his music [2020’s Superbloom], I realised I wanted to be a friend more than a band member. I just wanted to be there for him, so I put those things I was battling aside and he paved the way for the rest of us to be able to do it. He was the maverick in that sense.”

The rest of the album soars as high as the debut single. Influenced by artists like Phoenix, Bloc Party and Sufjan Stevens, the result is a sonically expansive, lyrically clever record that reveals the person Hood has grown into today. Known as the band member who would slink into the background in interviews and rarely gave anything away, here he puts his heart on his sleeve as he poignantly navigates heartbreak, identity and grief over synth-heavy production.

“It’s been the biggest challenge backing my music. Within the band you can hide behind other people. This is much more intense – it has my name on it and I feel a lot more naked. It’s necessary for me to feel this side of it and talk about it with all these people.”

Hood acknowledges that he has become a better musician through the making of the record and the collaborative process. The album’s primary producer, Jackson Phillips (aka the musician Day Wave) was Hood’s number one contender to co-produce the record. Phillips’s music struck a chord with him: “There’s a looseness, especially lyrically to it,” Hood says. “It’s not overthought. It’s feeling-led. There’s an integrity in what he does and his production style is unique.” Hood DM’d him on Instagram, proposing the idea of producing his debut solo record, which led to a natural, intuitive collaboration. “I don’t think I knew before [making this record] what I liked,” Hood says. “Which is a weird thing to say but when I was in the room, I would come up with ideas and I wasn’t sure if I liked them. Now I know what my style is and what references I like. I know myself a little more. Jackson helped me a lot by just doing his thing and giving me the space to figure myself out. There’s a lot of spatial awareness and we know how to get the best out of each other.”

Gaining that trust and space from his collaborators but also from himself has created an innate confidence and a level of control over the sound and image. The best moment from his solo journey has been making the music videos and realising his creative vision. Fashion has also been important. As the music soundtracking his late twenties evolves (he’s been listening to a lot of Interpol and Radiohead), his style is also transforming. There’s a playfulness and self-assuredness in what he wears: he showed up to the 10 Men set in loose tailored trousers, a collared shirt and a knitted jumper. “I’m constantly thinking about what to wear, especially with the band. Back in the day there was a uniform [black skinny jeans, Vans and ripped tees], but now each band member has found their own style. Lately, for me, it’s been a lot of skatepark [influences], but a little more elevated.” On set, he confidently leans into that grungy vibe inside Hibernian House, wearing very ’90s-esque Tommy Jeans.

Hood discovered what both his greatest strengths and weaknesses were throughout the album-making process. His strength, he says, is “the ability to let others speak”, but it is also born from his weakness of “not speaking enough”.

“But I have realised that I can do anything I want,” he says. “I think it’s being this age.” As he leaves our 10 Men cover shoot, he tells me he’s flying back home to LA the next day, where he will continue more promo and get back into the studio with 5SOS. “[Doing the solo album] has made me like the band a lot more. Not that I didn’t like it before, but it’s just made me remember why I loved it so much in the first place… I feel more like myself.”

As one of Australia’s biggest artists falls back in love with his music, his band and this new era of his life, Hood is only just getting warmed up.

@calumhood

tommy.com‍

CALUM HOOD: FALLING INTO PLACE
‍Photographer BYRON SPENCER
Fashion Editor PETER SIMON PHILLIPS
Talent CALUM HOOD
Text ROXY LOLA
Grooming GINA YATES
Photographer’s assistant MAXWELL FINCH
Fashion assistant CURLY
Videographer BEN MONTAGUE
Videographer’s assistant MIA KIDIS
Production CC PRODUCTION
Shot at LOLLY LOFT
Clothing throughout by TOMMY JEANS