“This album means so much to me,” Calum Hood tells Apple Music. “It’s all these vignettes of stories I’ve waited to tell until I got to a place where I could articulate them in a way I was really proud of.” On ORDER chaos ORDER, the debut solo album from the 5 Seconds of Summer bassist/vocalist, those vignettes alternate between frank observations on life and poetic, more ambiguous musings. They also find Hood at his most confessional, as is clear from the first lines of opener “Don’t Forget You Love Me”: “12am on Taco Tuesday/I’m crying out my eyes/And I’m sitting there wondering/If I want to be alive.” That the song starts with a robotic, Joy Division-esque beat over which Hood sings in a deep register also sets the tone for the record, one in which the Australian songwriter leaves behind 5SOS’ more commercially focused pop leanings to investigate worlds such as shoegaze (“Three of Swords”), dream pop (“All My Affection,” “Sweetdreams”), and indie electronica (“Call Me When You Know Better”). Working closely with producer Jackson Phillips (aka Day Wave), Hood’s musical touchstones were, he says, “a lot of European alt bands, like Teddybears, The Radio Dept., Phoenix, and then towards the end of the project, it leant more towards American influences like The Magnetic Fields and Interpol.” The album’s title reflects Hood’s journey making the record. “Those words really resonate with how I feel as an artist sometimes,” he offers. “The words are actually very complementary, they just kind of co-exist, and that’s how I wanted to approach this.” Here, Hood takes Apple Music through his debut solo album, track by track. “Don’t Forget You Love Me” “That song is very conversational in terms of me talking to myself, with a huge mantra of don’t forget you love me. It’s the most naked in terms of how vulnerable I feel singing or performing it. It was really important to go with my most truthful song first. It’s something that I say to myself, it’s something I [said] to my family as I [was] leaving 12 years ago. It just plays on these deep insecurities within myself. It’s almost a reminder to not lose that initial purity.” “Call Me When You Know Better” “There’s a thread of sadness within this album. In my head, this one plays out over one or two days and it’s just describing the feeling I’m going through. Essentially, these first two songs are conversations I had with my last partner, observing those feelings and touching on them postmortem. Sonically, I took heavy influence from Phoenix and even LCD Soundsystem.” “Sweetdreams” “This is probably the most pop-oriented song on the album. It’s built around this world where you’re aimlessly driving at night on a highway and the world is just passing around you, and you’re not really feeling like you’re coexisting with it. You’re by yourself, and the car crashes and everyone keeps on going. It touches on addiction—addiction to depression, to substance abuse, and also observing people that have lived that life, and what it’s like for them to experience that.” “I Wanted to Stay” “I wasn’t fully connecting with the song and thought we just needed another part. I thought of my dog who passed away a couple of years before, about all these beautiful times we had together and how much he taught me about myself and about unconditional love. And this melody started playing in my head which ended up being the chorus, and then these lyrics came to me. I think it was a little gift from him. Here’s the rest of your song. So it became an ode to the conversations that people still have with passed ones and a conversation with him.” “Sunsetter” “I’ve always loved the chords in the bridge and have tried to put them somewhere, but it was never really right. Then I played them after the second chorus and was like, ‘This is exactly what it needs to be.’ The lyrics up until then, there’s a mutual understanding between two people, and then the bridge signifies how quickly that can be turned on its head and how quickly your perception of things can change over time. It’s an ode to like, if things are great, really appreciate that they are great because maybe one day they won’t look the same. That’s where the chaos of that whole bridge comes from.” “All My Affection” “I was listening to a lot of Sufjan Stevens and how he treated his vocal, and Elliott Smith as well. Tripling the vocal makes it sound almost surreal, like you’re in someone’s head. It’s another one where the lyrics are very personal and a bit more esoteric. [It’s about] giving yourself to something or someone and having that being reciprocated and how that’s one of life’s greatest feelings.” “Endless Ways” “Me and Elijah Noll and Jackson Phillips wrote this one. David Bowie and Brian Eno used to do this thing where they went into two separate rooms and [wrote music] then came back and put the ideas together. We kind of did the same, except me and Elijah did lyrics and melody and Jackson did track, and, at the end of the day, we put it together and it became this beautiful song by chance. This one’s a lighthearted love song about finding yourself within another person.” “Streetwise” “There’s a documentary called Streetwise about these young Seattle kids who are about 12 who went rogue and off-grid and lived their lives on the streets. There’s this beautiful scene where a girl is professing her love for this kid and the kid’s not that fussed about it. I just thought that was amazing that these kids had a knowing of themselves so deeply, there wasn’t any second-guessing going on in the back of their mind. It’s the one song that isn’t totally based off my life. I found great inspiration in it.” “Dark Circles” “This one’s actually about a fantasy world where the band I’m in [5 Seconds of Summer] doesn’t exist anymore. It’s my love letter to the band where, if the band wasn’t to exist, a large part of myself would be wayward. So this is my love song to the boys.” “Three of Swords” “I really like that ‘Three of Swords’ is ending the project, ’cause it seems like it opens another door for me. The writing style feels a little more mature than the other songs, and it talks about a couple of different things—my childhood, growing up, and the house I live in now. It’s all about acceptance and over-nostalgia and how that can be a little bit toxic. It’s more about focusing my sights on the future.”