Dropping all of the rambunctious energy and emo-pop trappings that found them labeled a punk boy band when they first broke through while on tour with One Direction in 2013, Australia's 5 Seconds of Summer instead embrace a slick dance-pop sound on their third album, 2018's Youngblood. It's a transition they've been hinting at ever since their 2015 sophomore album, Sounds Good Feels Good. Even with that album's Good Charlotte collaborations, there was a generalized pop vibe throughout, and one that spoke to the unsustainable and largely flimsy "pop-punk" label. In truth, 5SOS have always been a pop entity first, with the spiky hair, power chords, and Warped Tour-ready brattitudes tagged on for show. So, the transition to a streamlined, post-EDM-flavored sound isn't really a shock, even if it's a notable shift. This time out, they've conscripted uber-producers like Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub (Avicii, the Vamps, Ellie Goulding), Sir Nolan (Fifth Harmony, Pitbull, Nick Jonas), and Watt (Post Malone, Justin Bieber) to help craft their hooky brand of dance-friendly anthems. Cuts like the opening title track, "Want You Back," and "Woke Up in Japan" are swooping, studio-savvy bangers, rife with finger-snap samples, dramatic piano riffs, and plenty of room for the band's vocals to take the spotlight. Elsewhere, tracks like "Lie to Me" and "Talk Fast" draw upon the springy guitar arpeggios and ersatz reggae intimations of '80s artists like the Police and Michael Jackson. It's a useful sound for 5SOS to embrace, and helps position them nicely as a lighter version of the 1975 or Imagine Dragons. While there are plenty of hooks here, the dancey pop attitude is matched by a growing maturity with lyrics about growing weary of the party scene, the emptiness of touring, and yearning for that one perfect love. All of which seems to fit a band, almost eight years into its career, whose original fans are just as likely to be filling out college applications as heading to Coachella.© Matt Collar /TiVo

Back in 2014 when 5 Seconds of Summer were a punky boy-band upstart opening for One Direction, the Australian quartet's name evoked a sun-soaked blast of irreverent teen giddiness -- like cranking Green Day's Dookie out of your car's speakers on the final trip to the beach with your friends before school started. As they've matured and embraced more elements of contemporary pop and electronic dance music, the group's name has felt more akin to spending languid days in one's room or walking the beach alone after a rough breakup. It's a particularly ruminative and introspective vibe they sink into on their streamlined fifth album, 2022's wryly titled 5SOS5. Gone are the crunchy electric guitars and snarky, nose-ringed sassiness that marked early hits like "She's Kinda Hot." Instead, the band craft sad romantic anthems built on shimmering synths, pulsing beats, and, in the case of the lead-off track "Complete Mess," a warmly arpeggiated bassline and R&B-esque fingersnaps over which singer Luke Hemmings croons about heartbreak and the fleeting evanescence of Heaven. Much of the album brings to mind the Weeknd's distinctive brand of atmospheric pop -- songs shot through with a yearning, after-hours regret and spiritual modern-rock uplift. Interestingly, while never explicitly addressing religion, cuts like "Me Myself & I," "Take My Hand," and "Bad Omens," conjure an emotional midway point between songs about faith and songs about relationships. There are also some nice hooks here, and tracks like the gothy, electro-inspired "You Don't Go to Parties" and the shoegaze-leaning "Haze" reveal the group's continued interest in mining '90s alt-rock sounds.© Matt Collar /TiVo

Dropping all of the rambunctious energy and emo-pop trappings that found them labeled a punk boy band when they first broke through while on tour with One Direction in 2013, Australia's 5 Seconds of Summer instead embrace a slick dance-pop sound on their third album, 2018's Youngblood. It's a transition they've been hinting at ever since their 2015 sophomore album, Sounds Good Feels Good. Even with that album's Good Charlotte collaborations, there was a generalized pop vibe throughout, and one that spoke to the unsustainable and largely flimsy "pop-punk" label. In truth, 5SOS have always been a pop entity first, with the spiky hair, power chords, and Warped Tour-ready brattitudes tagged on for show. So, the transition to a streamlined, post-EDM-flavored sound isn't really a shock, even if it's a notable shift. This time out, they've conscripted uber-producers like Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub (Avicii, the Vamps, Ellie Goulding), Sir Nolan (Fifth Harmony, Pitbull, Nick Jonas), and Watt (Post Malone, Justin Bieber) to help craft their hooky brand of dance-friendly anthems. Cuts like the opening title track, "Want You Back," and "Woke Up in Japan" are swooping, studio-savvy bangers, rife with finger-snap samples, dramatic piano riffs, and plenty of room for the band's vocals to take the spotlight. Elsewhere, tracks like "Lie to Me" and "Talk Fast" draw upon the springy guitar arpeggios and ersatz reggae intimations of '80s artists like the Police and Michael Jackson. It's a useful sound for 5SOS to embrace, and helps position them nicely as a lighter version of the 1975 or Imagine Dragons. While there are plenty of hooks here, the dancey pop attitude is matched by a growing maturity with lyrics about growing weary of the party scene, the emptiness of touring, and yearning for that one perfect love. All of which seems to fit a band, almost eight years into its career, whose original fans are just as likely to be filling out college applications as heading to Coachella.© Matt Collar /TiVo

Dropping all of the rambunctious energy and emo-pop trappings that found them labeled a punk boy band when they first broke through while on tour with One Direction in 2013, Australia's 5 Seconds of Summer instead embrace a slick dance-pop sound on their third album, 2018's Youngblood. It's a transition they've been hinting at ever since their 2015 sophomore album, Sounds Good Feels Good. Even with that album's Good Charlotte collaborations, there was a generalized pop vibe throughout, and one that spoke to the unsustainable and largely flimsy "pop-punk" label. In truth, 5SOS have always been a pop entity first, with the spiky hair, power chords, and Warped Tour-ready brattitudes tagged on for show. So, the transition to a streamlined, post-EDM-flavored sound isn't really a shock, even if it's a notable shift. This time out, they've conscripted uber-producers like Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub (Avicii, the Vamps, Ellie Goulding), Sir Nolan (Fifth Harmony, Pitbull, Nick Jonas), and Watt (Post Malone, Justin Bieber) to help craft their hooky brand of dance-friendly anthems. Cuts like the opening title track, "Want You Back," and "Woke Up in Japan" are swooping, studio-savvy bangers, rife with finger-snap samples, dramatic piano riffs, and plenty of room for the band's vocals to take the spotlight. Elsewhere, tracks like "Lie to Me" and "Talk Fast" draw upon the springy guitar arpeggios and ersatz reggae intimations of '80s artists like the Police and Michael Jackson. It's a useful sound for 5SOS to embrace, and helps position them nicely as a lighter version of the 1975 or Imagine Dragons. While there are plenty of hooks here, the dancey pop attitude is matched by a growing maturity with lyrics about growing weary of the party scene, the emptiness of touring, and yearning for that one perfect love. All of which seems to fit a band, almost eight years into its career, whose original fans are just as likely to be filling out college applications as heading to Coachella.© Matt Collar /TiVo

This fourth album from the young Aussie pop/rock quartet follows 2018's Youngblood and charts their transition into adulthood with a somewhat darker, vaguely industrial sound. Produced by, among others, Louis Bell (Camila Cabello, Lana del Rey), it includes the singles "Easier," "Teeth," and the throbbing "No Shame," which cleverly and cynically deconstructs the experience of fame.© John D. Buchanan /TiVo

With their spiky hair, electric guitars, and dewy, lip-ringed smiles, Australia's 5 Seconds of Summer are often dubbed the One Direction of punk-pop. It's an admittedly facile if apt comparison, reinforced by the fact that 5SOS (Five Sauce, as their fans call them) toured with One Direction in 2013. However, even if 5SOS are a punk boy band, that's a minor distinction, and one that's arguably been around since Green Day brought it to inception with 1994's Dookie. It's also a brilliant marketing tool brought to its apotheosis at the dawn of the millennium by blink-182's multi-platinum album Enema of the State. Of course, when blink-182 mugged on a beach as they did in the video for "All the Small Things," it was a satirical goof on the greater TRL teen pop world that the trio found itself implausibly at the epicenter of in 1999. For 5SOS, most of whom were still in diapers when the video premiered, it might as well have been the genesis moment, the birth of a cross-genre aesthetic rife with blink's cheeky punk attitude, but one in which the implied irony is lost, and everything is taken at face value.16 years after blink-182's breakthrough, 5SOS have taken stock of all the small things with their sophomore album, 2015's Sounds Good Feels Good, a slick, professional production that finds them embracing their punky boy band image with unabashed glee. Recorded in Los Angeles with producer John Feldmann (the Used, All Time Low, Plain White T's), Sounds Good Feels Good also features collaborations with a handful of like-minded if slightly older artists, including Good Charlotte's Benji and Joel Madden, and All Time Low's Alex Gaskarth. Generally speaking, this big brother/little brother vibe works, and cuts like "She's Kinda Hot" and "Permanent Vacation" are upbeat, singalong-ready anthems that sound birthed from the hormonal fantasies of teenage bros who subsist on Mountain Dew and Sour Patch Kids, and the wet dreams of rich, middle-aged record executives. The rest of the album reveals a more earnest inclination, with 5SOS delving into some dancey, 1975-esque post-punk on "Waste the Night," going for orchestral flourishes on the ballad "Invisible," and shading their chunky '90s Radiohead guitars with crooning emo angst on "Airplanes."That said, one wonders how 5SOS can get away with blatantly lifting the melody of Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf," as they do on "Hey Everybody!" The answer is by freely copping to the lift and crediting Duran Duran. In the end, though, perhaps we shouldn't be too critical of the band's unabashed cut-and-paste sound, especially if the songs are as a catchy as they are here. As Five Sauce sing on "Hey Everybody!" "We can all get some, yeah, we can all get paid."© Matt Collar /TiVo

This fourth album from the young Aussie pop/rock quartet follows 2018's Youngblood and charts their transition into adulthood with a somewhat darker, vaguely industrial sound. Produced by, among others, Louis Bell (Camila Cabello, Lana del Rey), it includes the singles "Easier," "Teeth," and the throbbing "No Shame," which cleverly and cynically deconstructs the experience of fame.© John D. Buchanan /TiVo

If one could draw a Venn diagram with Southern California punk-pop giants Green Day on the left and British boy band sensations One Direction on the right, the circles would most likely intersect to create Australia's 5 Seconds of Summer. A four-member ensemble of youthful, guitar-wielding, Christian College grads from Sydney, 5 Seconds of Summer make an utterly populist brand of power pop that has way more to do with the member's spikey-cute hairdos, skintight jeans, and twenty-something-year-old libidos than it does any kind of actual punk-inspired mischief. Which isn’t' to say there aren’t plenty of songs to enjoy on the band's eponymous 2014 full-length debut. If 5 Seconds of Summer learned anything from touring with One Direction (as they did in 2013), it was probably how to style their hair. However, if they learned two things, then the second was clearly how to write a catchy chorus; a talent the band and their producers display throughout most of the album. Primarily, 5 Seconds of Summer deliver track after track of gargantuan pop/rock, packed with immediately hummable melodies that anyone over 30 will probably feel slightly guilty for remembering. Cuts like the lead-off, "She Looks So Perfect," and the equally wide-eyed "Don’t Stop," are pure sugar, guitar-rock candy that will appeal to anyone who still has a sweet tooth for Sum 41. It also doesn’t hurt that the band seem to have, if not exactly a sense of humor, then a silly exuberance for their brand of teen rawk. In fact, cuts like the campy,'80s dance-rock of "English Love Affair," and the driving, "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me," bring to mind the similarly rambunctious '90s punk-pop of blink-182. Ultimately, 5 Seconds of Summer have crafted an album of songs that stick in your head like neon bubblegum on a hot summer sidewalk.© Matt Collar /TiVo

Dropping all of the rambunctious energy and emo-pop trappings that found them labeled a punk boy band when they first broke through while on tour with One Direction in 2013, Australia's 5 Seconds of Summer instead embrace a slick dance-pop sound on their third album, 2018's Youngblood. It's a transition they've been hinting at ever since their 2015 sophomore album, Sounds Good Feels Good. Even with that album's Good Charlotte collaborations, there was a generalized pop vibe throughout, and one that spoke to the unsustainable and largely flimsy "pop-punk" label. In truth, 5SOS have always been a pop entity first, with the spiky hair, power chords, and Warped Tour-ready brattitudes tagged on for show. So, the transition to a streamlined, post-EDM-flavored sound isn't really a shock, even if it's a notable shift. This time out, they've conscripted uber-producers like Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub (Avicii, the Vamps, Ellie Goulding), Sir Nolan (Fifth Harmony, Pitbull, Nick Jonas), and Watt (Post Malone, Justin Bieber) to help craft their hooky brand of dance-friendly anthems. Cuts like the opening title track, "Want You Back," and "Woke Up in Japan" are swooping, studio-savvy bangers, rife with finger-snap samples, dramatic piano riffs, and plenty of room for the band's vocals to take the spotlight. Elsewhere, tracks like "Lie to Me" and "Talk Fast" draw upon the springy guitar arpeggios and ersatz reggae intimations of '80s artists like the Police and Michael Jackson. It's a useful sound for 5SOS to embrace, and helps position them nicely as a lighter version of the 1975 or Imagine Dragons. While there are plenty of hooks here, the dancey pop attitude is matched by a growing maturity with lyrics about growing weary of the party scene, the emptiness of touring, and yearning for that one perfect love. All of which seems to fit a band, almost eight years into its career, whose original fans are just as likely to be filling out college applications as heading to Coachella.© Matt Collar /TiVo

If one could draw a Venn diagram with Southern California punk-pop giants Green Day on the left and British boy band sensations One Direction on the right, the circles would most likely intersect to create Australia's 5 Seconds of Summer. A four-member ensemble of youthful, guitar-wielding, Christian College grads from Sydney, 5 Seconds of Summer make an utterly populist brand of power pop that has way more to do with the member's spikey-cute hairdos, skintight jeans, and twenty-something-year-old libidos than it does any kind of actual punk-inspired mischief. Which isn’t' to say there aren’t plenty of songs to enjoy on the band's eponymous 2014 full-length debut. If 5 Seconds of Summer learned anything from touring with One Direction (as they did in 2013), it was probably how to style their hair. However, if they learned two things, then the second was clearly how to write a catchy chorus; a talent the band and their producers display throughout most of the album. Primarily, 5 Seconds of Summer deliver track after track of gargantuan pop/rock, packed with immediately hummable melodies that anyone over 30 will probably feel slightly guilty for remembering. Cuts like the lead-off, "She Looks So Perfect," and the equally wide-eyed "Don’t Stop," are pure sugar, guitar-rock candy that will appeal to anyone who still has a sweet tooth for Sum 41. It also doesn’t hurt that the band seem to have, if not exactly a sense of humor, then a silly exuberance for their brand of teen rawk. In fact, cuts like the campy,'80s dance-rock of "English Love Affair," and the driving, "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me," bring to mind the similarly rambunctious '90s punk-pop of blink-182. Ultimately, 5 Seconds of Summer have crafted an album of songs that stick in your head like neon bubblegum on a hot summer sidewalk.© Matt Collar /TiVo

Back in 2014 when 5 Seconds of Summer were a punky boy-band upstart opening for One Direction, the Australian quartet's name evoked a sun-soaked blast of irreverent teen giddiness -- like cranking Green Day's Dookie out of your car's speakers on the final trip to the beach with your friends before school started. As they've matured and embraced more elements of contemporary pop and electronic dance music, the group's name has felt more akin to spending languid days in one's room or walking the beach alone after a rough breakup. It's a particularly ruminative and introspective vibe they sink into on their streamlined fifth album, 2022's wryly titled 5SOS5. Gone are the crunchy electric guitars and snarky, nose-ringed sassiness that marked early hits like "She's Kinda Hot." Instead, the band craft sad romantic anthems built on shimmering synths, pulsing beats, and, in the case of the lead-off track "Complete Mess," a warmly arpeggiated bassline and R&B-esque fingersnaps over which singer Luke Hemmings croons about heartbreak and the fleeting evanescence of Heaven. Much of the album brings to mind the Weeknd's distinctive brand of atmospheric pop -- songs shot through with a yearning, after-hours regret and spiritual modern-rock uplift. Interestingly, while never explicitly addressing religion, cuts like "Me Myself & I," "Take My Hand," and "Bad Omens," conjure an emotional midway point between songs about faith and songs about relationships. There are also some nice hooks here, and tracks like the gothy, electro-inspired "You Don't Go to Parties" and the shoegaze-leaning "Haze" reveal the group's continued interest in mining '90s alt-rock sounds.© Matt Collar /TiVo