Album review: Everyone’s a Star by 5 Seconds of Summer a four-star hit
The Australian pop/rock band 5 Seconds of Summer has notched six ARIA No.1s with its first six studio albums, and Everyone’s a Star continues its impressive run at the peak of pop culture.
Here are our reviews of the latest album releases.
POP/ROCK
Everyone’s A Star! by 5 Seconds of Summer; Republic Records/UMA
For a group whose musical journey has traversed tricky teenage years into adulthood, it can often be difficult to look past 5 Seconds of Summer as anything but the young musicians who burst onto the scene back in the early 2010s. With a decidedly pop-influenced approach to songwriting that has seen the Sydney-born quartet notch six successive ARIA No.1s with their first six studio albums, the band’s continued sonic evolution has been a notable one, with 2020’s Calm offering insight into the musicians’ growing sense of maturity, and 2022’s 5SOS5 coming from a place of greater introspection.
While vocalist/guitarist Luke Hemmings and drummer Ashton Irwin launched solo careers between the band’s previous two records, recent years have seen guitarist Michael Clifford and bassist Calum Hood follow suit, resulting in 5SOS bringing a wider array of external influences and experiences into their sixth album, Everyone’s a Star! With the album’s announcement accompanied by a self-described return of “your favourite boyband”, it appeared as though 5SOS were approaching their latest LP with a sense of self-awareness, with the utilisation of a Y2K-influenced aesthetic seemingly confirming a tongue-in-cheek nature to the record. Indeed, Everyone’s a Star! is an album that could not have been made as a debut – it’s the musical product of years of industry experience as well as time spent at the peak of pop culture.
That same experience can often bring with it a jaded approach to the creative process, and has famously seen artists musically lash out at the very machine they perceive themselves as cogs within. 5SOS, however, gracefully avoid this pitfall, instead harnessing their shared past to craft a record that, while still steering into fans’ expectations, is more of an ironic commentary on its own status. As the title track encapsulates the energy behind the group’s rise to stardom, Boyband sees 5SOS recapture the titular, pejorative concept as adult men, and Telephone Busy itself presents as a track about troubled relationships – be they romantic, or with the group’s concept of fame. There’s a sense of rewriting their own story and the foursome coming to terms with who they are as musicians – and headline-grabbing figures in the industry – but it’s one written from a place of power rather than one of resignation.
However, it’s not all irony and meta concepts, with discussions of fallibility and vulnerability at play on Not OK, while Evolve is an empowering commentary on growth, and Ghost presents as an intense piece of emotional songwriting from Hemmings. Underneath its genre-shifting facade – which ranges from early 2000s pop to stadium-ready rock and introspective balladry – lies a record that captures a group performing at its best. Though it’s easy to look back on 5SOS as the She Looks So Perfect hitmakers of yesteryear, to do so is to overlook almost 15 years of evolution and countless hours spent reclaiming (after first defying) their well-deserved role as your favourite boyband.
★★★★
Tyler Jenke
ELECTRONIC
Moments by Cut Copy; Cutters Records / The Orchard
There’s nothing ‘lucky’ about Cut Copy’s excellent seventh album; rather, Moments captures a group that remains enduringly cohesive despite its members being scattered around the world. Arriving five years after its last LP — the introspective and atmospheric Freeze, Melt — Moments sees the Melbourne-born four-piece nod to its synth-driven early sound while charting a looser, more expansive, and sometimes mellower path. Repeat listens reward, as subtle layering of effects, and weird and worldly instruments emerge among the stellar production completed in northern NSW, all of it anchored as usual by frontman Dan Whitford’s inimitable pipes. Album highlight When This Is Over is a case in point, combining Tim Hoey’s plucky acoustic guitar, an eerie synth and fuzzy percussion, with a children’s choir cameo the unexpected cherry on top. The title track, meanwhile, with its brooding slow beat, harks back to the best of Freeze, Melt, but ends on its own terms via a sunnier outro. Belong to You straddles pop territory as Whitford’s lovesick vocal is propelled by US folk artist Kate Bollinger, all combined with a dirty bassline and squelchy synths. Elsewhere, tracks like Gravity offer more kick and delve into psychedelic territory reminiscent of 2013’s Free Your Mind. And therein lies the band’s secret sauce: 25 years of musical experimentation means its signature sound can duck and weave to glorious effect, cherrypicking past — ahem — moments to inform new material that is gloriously fresh, but unmistakingly Cut Copy.
★★★★
Tim McNamara
INDIE ROCK
Double Infinity by Big Thief; 4AD
Big Thief’s sixth album is the Brooklyn band’s first since the departure of founding bassist Max Oleartchik. In response to that absence, the remaining three members invited a swath of guests into New York’s fabled Power Station studio to jam for hours on end. Recorded live in the room with improvised arrangements, these songs lean more into dreamy rock and open-ended psych than the ramshackle folk and country of the last few Big Thief records. While it feels very much like a transitional record, Adrianne Lenker retains her talent for vulnerable vocals and lyrics alike. She can pluck an affecting mantra out of thin air, such as “Words won’t make it right” on the bustling Words and the title phrase of Happy With You. If the emotional rawness is dialled back this time around, it’s rewarding to hear the now-trio invite in new-found colours and rhythms on spacey jams like No Fear and Grandmother. And on the opening Incomprehensible, you can hear that spontaneous dynamic blossom in real time.
★★★½
Doug Wallen
POP
International by Saint Etienne; Heavenly
It’s a rare thing for a band to bow out on its own terms, and even rarer to still be friends. But after 35 years and 13 albums, Saint Etienne – the English trio of Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs – is calling it a day. International is a fond farewell from a group that somehow straddled swinging-’60s pop, acid house, freaktronica, ambient and more. First single Glad is co-produced with Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers, and it’s difficult to stop smiling while it’s playing; its rattling beat, synthetic horns and squelchy cross-fades give off the impression of a well-loved ‘90s mixtape. Guests pop in and out as if it’s an awards show – Vince Clarke from Depeche Mode and Yazoo pouring synths all over Two Lovers; Janet Planet from Australia’s Confidence Man adding sly vocals to soul-pop sparkler Brand New Me; Nick Heyward from ‘80s floppy-fringed popsters Haircut 100 sounding eternally boyish on The Go-Betweens. In the end there’s The Last Time, with Cracknell cooing about the bittersweet nature of reconnecting with old school friends on Facebook. You can almost sense a cheeky wink as the trio rides off into the sunset.
★★★½
Barry Divola
ROCK
Antidepressants by Suede; BMG
Second acts rarely go as well as Suede’s. After a meteoric rise in the ‘90s with its grit-meets-glam take on indie rock that predated Britpop, the band split in 2003, only to re-form less than a decade later. Of Antidepressants — the fifth album in act two and 10th of its career — frontman Brett Anderson has said that if 2022’s Autofiction was their take on punk, then this is their post-punk moment. There’s truth in that, with echoes of Magazine, Killing Joke and Siouxsie and the Banshees throughout. The title track, about the shaky promise of mental stability through meds, rides on wiry, jagged guitars, with Anderson delivering a delirious yet powerful vocal. The singalong, shape-casting drama of Dancing with the Europeans brings his Bowie influences to the fore, while Sweet Kid is just lovely, a star-spangled riff buoying sentiments directed to his son as he watches him grow: “All the ways that you’re changing with every skin that you shed.” Anderson is often addressing darkness on Antidepressants, but he’s not glass-half-empty in his attitude, and the music is often triumphant. As he puts it at one point, “it’s broken music and it’s broken people who will save the world.”
★★★★
Barry Divola
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