Calum Hood's Solo Debut 'ORDER chaos ORDER' is a Masterfully Intimate Reckoning with Chaos and Clarity: Album Review

CREDIT: PRESS

Stand-out tracks: "Don't Forget You Love Me" "I Wanted to Stay" "Three of Swords"

Our favorites: "Sunsetter" "Endless Ways" "Streetwise"

Release date: June 13, 2025

Label: Capitol Records

For fans of: Luke Hemmings, Day Wave, Del Water Gap

Calum Hood lives a delicate balance of order and chaos. The 5 Seconds of Summer bassist has been on and off the road with one of the biggest Australian music exports in history for the last decade and a half, headlining venues from the Sydney Opera House to the Royal Albert Hall to Madison Square Garden. But behind that pulsing mega power of the band, Hood is just a man dabbling in tarot card readings and writing songs, longing to find solace in a sense of home, and finding ways to process the emotions of growing up, growing older, falling in love, and falling out of it.

Over the last two years, grappling with unprocessed memories, restless displacement, and the subliminal breakdown caused by fresh air after years of trying to keep his head above water, Hood found purpose in his writing, crafting a record that melds freedom with isolation, hazy synth-rock with sunny alt-pop, and his identity as an artist with his identity as an human. The result: his debut solo album, ORDER chaos ORDER, released June 13 via Capitol Records and EMI Australia.

ORDER chaos ORDER feels more like a collection of moments gathered in a photobook of memories rather than a chronological narrative, all tied together by an oximoronic gritty-smooth alt-rock sound that Calum, along with his producer, Day Wave, has crafted to create a viscerally felt sonic diary. Calum introduced himself as a solo artist with "Don't Forget You Love Me" as the record's lead single, and now, the restless, sonorous, synthy confessional opens the album with a tangible penitence for the actions of the Calum of the past, seen through the eyes of the Calum telling the story. The echoing of "Don't forget you love me / Don't you forget!" feels equally desirous as it does uneasy, understatedly previewing the themes of each of the following vignettes that make up ORDER chaos ORDER. Beyond Hood's vocal richness and undeniable chops with a bass guitar, the album opener sinks into Calum's world with an ache to learn his heart and mind through the order and the chaos.

Across the project, Hood grapples with shades of isolation - emotional, physical, romantic - all culminating in interwoven themes of searching for peace and subjecting to the pull of external forces, each of which can be picked apart and put back together over and over again. He owns every trauma, every chink in his armor, with the presence of mind of a man extending a hand of forgiveness to another version of himself, using production ploys only the most practiced of artists would enlist to make every emotion extend into something that is felt rather than solely heard. "Call Me When You Know Better" is a sardonic spiral of self-deprecation over the most effervescent of instrumentals. "Streetwise" dooms loves of the future from the present, making it look easy to promise forever when you don't know intrinsically if you'll keep that promise, with Hood's vocals slipping in between entangled synth piano runs and pulsating guitars. And "I Wanted to Stay" sees Calum holding those he loves at arm's length out of fear of getting lost to time or circumstance, enlisting a syncopated drumbeat and high line of twinkly keyboard work to settle somewhere between a disorienting spiral and a dream for the impossibility of extinguished isolation when he wants it most.

While many of the tracks on ORDER chaos ORDER are distinctly crafted from Calum's examinations of his mistakes and self-doubts, "Sunsetter" and "Endless Ways" emphasize the most human of joys: feelings of freedom and understanding from a kindred spirit. "Sunsetter" may take the prize for the most ethereal of production on the project, giving an uninhibited glimmering to the gentleness and purity of its lyrical content: "You and I forever / What's it gonna take? / Come with me, sunsetter / I'll steer this heavy ride / Just keep this dream alive." Cracking the glass that has caged him in the past, Calum finds space to revel in the fragility of freedom and companionship. Within the realm of music created by 5 Seconds of Summer as a band and as solo artists, they've never shied away from putting into music the gratitude they have for each other and the way music has connected them to the world around them as they've grown older, from the band's own "Best Friends" off their 2022 album to drummer Ashton Irwin's "Glory Days" off his sophomore project BLOOD ON THE DRUMS. "Endless Ways" feels like Calum's homage to those roots, employing the poppiest production of the record and singing, "Sometimes it takes somebody else / To get to know yourself / To take your hand and hitch a ride / One more dance and one more cry."

To the casual listener, album closer "Three of Swords" gifts absolutely stunning vocal layering, mesmerizing alt-rock production, and a tale of the most devastating heartbreak (see: "Did you imagine when we were younger / I wouldn't see you for what felt like a thousand years? / We put an expiration date on forever." Ouch to growing older.). But to those who have stood by Calum Hood across his full career, watching him live through eras of growth, loss, and reinvention, all to arrive at this moment, the larger than life production of "Three of Swords" can't hide the underlying care that Calum has poured into the connections he's forged through music: "When you're wide awake/ Do you wander back? / Can you make it still? / Are you coming home? / And I'll love you close."

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