A Sky Full Of Stories

I am a fan of Australian pop-punk band 5 Seconds Of Summer. Let’s get that out right away. But more importantly, I am a fan of rock music, and that’s the hat I’m wearing as I’m writing this review. I am a fan of bands like My Chemical Romance, Black Veil Brides, and You Me At Six. I love the scream of electric guitars. I am among the alternative, the misfits, the people who weren’t popular in when they were in high school because they couldn’t be bothered to care about Justin Bieber. When I first came across 5 Seconds Of Summer, I was as wary as you were. They were young, and easy on the eyes, and sure they had guitars in their hands but so do lots of pop acts. I gave them a chance, though, and I wasn’t disappointed. This is sort of a concert review, but more importantly it is an essay on why you should give them a chance too.

5 Seconds Of Summer, 5sos for short, played in Winnipeg last night on their Rock Out With Your Socks Out tour, and did indeed “blow the fuckin’ roof” off the MTS Centre as drummer Ashton Irwin promised. During their 90 minute set, the four members brought the audience of thousands to their feet, moving expertly through a catalogue of songs from their debut 2014 album, as well as a few fan favorites from earlier EPs, two from their upcoming sophomore effort, and two covers - a very well-done and uncensored rendition of Greenday’s American Idiot, in which guitarist Michael Clifford gleefully yelled “the subliminal mind, fuck America!”, and The Romantics’ 1980 hit What I Like About You, the single off the 5sos live album (released late last year) that honestly out-does the original.

They were a joy to watch. I can’t remember the last time I saw a band with this much energy. The three mobile members - Clifford, along with lead singer Luke Hemmings and bass player Calum Hood - ran around the stage with the zest of school-aged children at a playground, working the crowd from all angles, leaping onto platform boxes and split-jumping back off them, making even audience members in the back row feel noticed and valued. Drummer Irwin was, by nature of his trade, immobilized behind his drum kit, which is some ways is a shame because I get the sense he has the most energy of any of them. He’s extremely skilled, though, and it is a treat to watch him attack the drum kit in a manner that’s almost violent. All of them, really, must be bruised and exhausted to the bone by the time a performance is finished.

The other thing they were, is very definitely, categorically, a rock back. At the beginning of their musical career, 5sos was invited to go on two tours with international pop phenomenon One Direction as their opening act. This was a smart move for them, but also a dumb one. Smart, because it helped them acquire the type of fame that allows them to play arenas. Dumb, because the music world, in a childish display of guilt by association, labelled them a “boy band” before even listening to a single note. 

5sos is not a boy band. If my mind wasn’t already made up on that point, the show last night would have sealed the deal. The entire set was harsh and grungey and guitar-driven. Hemmings, who in another life could have been in a boy band with his chiselled features and blue eyes and velvety smooth voice, could not possibly have cared less about what he looked like while singing or if his outfit was designer or if he’d grace magazine covers the next day. He was unshaven and sweaty, his voice raw and loud and beautifully flawed. The other three sing as well - Clifford has a rough edge to his voice that brings Billie Joe Armstrong to mind and lends itself perfectly to the genre, and Hood, who a year ago was arguably the group’s weakest vocalist, has come into his own and now thrills audiences with a smoky, resonant tone. There were mistakes. There were forgotten lyrics and missed notes and cracks in their voices. It wasn’t a pretty, polished affair like you’d find if you went to see Beyonce. 5sos are not a well-oiled machine. They are a rock band. Their shows are imperfect, and therefore perfect.

This band gets a lot of hate within the rock community, mostly because they are young and attractive so people have labelled them a pop group when they aren’t. They were nominated for an Alternative Press Music Award this past month, and there were many who took offence to this on the platform that 5sos don’t belong in the alternative music crowd. This type of ignorance is unfortunate, but the good news is it isn’t slowing the Aussie rockers down for even a second. Their show last night was everything a rock concert should be. It was ear-drum-splittingly loud, rough, tarnished rock perfection. Even songs like Long Way Home and Disconnected that in studio leaned more on the pop side of pop-punk, in concert were as heavy and guitar-driven as anything Nickelback has ever released. The band members don’t care for a moment about how they look. They don’t dance. They play instruments, and they play them well - Clifford can, there’s no other word for it, “shred”. The dictionary defines rock music with qualifiers like “anti-Establishment lyrics” and “harsher and often self-consciously more serious than [pop]” and “usually based on a twelve-bar structure and an instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drums”. 5sos fits the bill in every possible way.

You can still call them a boyband if you want to. In developed countries Free Speech is an inalienable right, which means unless you’re directly threatening someone you can pretty much say whatever you want. You can call them rap. Hell, you can call them big band jazz if you want to. It doesn’t matter. What Free Speech doesn’t do for you, is guarantee that everything that comes out of your mouth is correct. And calling 5sos anything other than rock, is wrong. Sorry. Take it up with the dictionary. 

This band is important. Don’t hate them because their fans are young. They are important because their fans are young. Young people dictate the direction of the music industry, because they are the ones with disposable income to burn on albums and concert tickets. The 5sos fanbase probably has an average age of around 16 or 17, and that’s important because it means their songs make it onto the radio. Rock music, on the radio. It’s been so long.

Now, I know. As fans of alternative music, mainstream radio represents everything we hate about the world. It represents corporate greed, music being manufactured and mass-produced like a pair of Uggs, treated as commodity instead of an art form, songs being written by hired suits in an office tower instead of on the street by a real artist with a drug problem. We think the Top 40 chart is a pile of garbage. We would never want anything we listen to on those airwaves because then it would be cool, and as soon as something becomes cool it’s no longer alternative. I get that. I’m with you.

However, it’s important to remember that the music business is just that - a business. It is run, as all business are, on supply and demand. Money and resources go into the products that sell. Currently, those products are performers like Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran. Who are great, if you’re into pop. If you’re not, you’re already aware of the tragic lack of support for other types of music. I don’t need to belly-ache to you about how much it sucks that alternative bands don’t get the support from their labels that they deserve.

5sos is important to music because they’re getting radio play. Maybe not quite Top 40 radio play, but still. Remember when guitars were on the raido? Remember when bands like Blink 182 and Greenday dominated the music scene? Remember when Welcome To The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance was a Top 40 hit? Those days seem like a lifetime ago, but they’re set to make a comeback because young people, it seems, are finally starting to tire of the bright lights, the over-production, and the vapid lyrics that define pop music. Increasingly, they don’t want to sing along to a song about having the hypothetical best night of your life at a club that they couldn’t even get into, or a song telling them they’re the most beautiful girl in the world sung by a boy with a conventionally attractive but non-threatening face who’s singing the same words to millions of girls worldwide and somehow tricking them all into believing he’s talking about each one of them. They’re looking for something with a little more substance. 

Here’s the bottom line. If you’re a fan of rock, you don’t have to like 5sos. They don’t need you. They have more than enough fans already. But you should care about them, because of what they’re doing for rock music. They don’t need your adoration but they deserve your respect, because they’ve done what most of your favorite bands couldn’t - they’re putting guitars back on the radio and selling out arenas that seat 10 thousand people or more, filled with young fans in ripped denim and Converse. They are nearly single-handedly spearheading the revival of rock. 

If you’re a fan of 5sos, I hope you have/will get a chance to attend a show on this tour, because it will be a night you’ll never forget. If you’re a fan of rock music but not of 5sos, that’s fine, but buckle up anyway because four kids from Sydney are about to change your world for the better. They are introducing this generation’s youth to bands like Metallica and The Ramones. They are going to inspire young kids to pick up a guitar and start a band, instead of trying to be the next Selena Gomez. They are going to be indirectly responsible for the creation of new rock bands, who will get mainstream attention because, finally, they’ll have a mainstream audience again. The music scene is shifting, and when it does, we’ll look back in five or ten years and say “5sos did that” the same way we look at Nirvana for the grunge movement in the 90s.