video review: '5 seconds of summer' by 5 seconds of summer

Well, I'm not sure about the lighting here, but I think it looks alright.

Next up will probably be How To Dress Well, then Mastodon, then I might check out Open Mike Eagle. Then this month... hell, I dunno. We'll see. :D In any case, stay tuned!

album review: '5 seconds of summer' by 5 seconds of summer

Okay, let's try this again.

So a few months back, in an attempt to fill some time between reviews, I covered the debut EP of 5 Seconds of Summer, She Looks So Perfect. To be kind, I was ambivalent on the EP at best, a small slice of mostly forgettable pop rock that suffered from poor production balance and questionable songwriting, not to mention a pale shadow of better pop rock acts that came before. That review received something of a mixed reaction from folks, as many were quick to make a lot of excuses for the band that didn't really fly. Yes, they started on YouTube and they're teenagers and they wrote all their own songs and they wrote so many more good ones that didn't make the EP, so I should just give them a pass, right?

Well, no, I'm not doing that - half because it denigrates YouTube talents and teenagers who write their own music who do show incredible talent, and half because those excuses have nothing to do with the content of the music and everything to do with the artist. You can make all sorts of excuses for the artist in question but it's not going to make the music better. And yeah, it's silly pop rock and I probably went further in-depth into the songwriting than even the band did, but I repeat, there are plenty of pop rock bands who do this sort of thing better. I think to some degree the fandom for this band comes from the marketing machine you see every time a pop rock band in this vein gets popular, and maybe it's just with the benefit of history or some deeper knowledge of how these bands chart, but there's a formula here, shaped by the producers if not by the band itself. And with that in mind, I've seen the formula done better.

That said, I did recognize that it was a four song EP, and bands seldom get the chance to show all their facets on such a small sampler, so I resolved to pick up their self-titled debut album and give them another chance - what did I find?

video review: 'she looks so perfect ep' by 5 seconds of summer

There, are you happy now? I did not need this today...

Okay, next up will either be Cloud Nothings or SZA, we'll see. Stay tuned!

album review: 'she looks so perfect ep' by 5 seconds of summer

...alright, fine, I'll talk about 5 Seconds of Summer. But let me make this clear, I'm only covering this act because I need more time to write about a whole slew of other acts in my backlog and it shouldn't take me that long to cover a four song EP. And really, I don't tend to cover a lot of EPs - mostly because I like full-length albums with arcs and artistic statements, which, for the record, you can find in pop music.

But even if I did cover EPs, I could not be less interested in talking about 5 Seconds of Summer. At first glance, these guys look like a low-rent Nickelodeon pilot with the production values to match it. Yes, I've covered teen pop and boy bands in the past, and I'll even admit some fondness for some of it, but good shallow pop music has elements that make it work or stand out. Even dumb power pop - which has been around in some form or another for decades - has the guys who stand head-and-shoulders above the rest in terms of songwriting, melodies, or sheer presence and charisma. I'm talking about acts like Semisonic, Fountains Of Wayne, The Knack, some parts of Jimmy Eat World and Weezer. My point is that this isn't anything new, and the argument that 'well, sure, it's not new, but we can't expect teenagers to go looking for the classics because they're teenagers and they'll consume anything we shovel into their ears' smacks of real laziness and a degree of contempt for the target audience.

But hey, 5 Seconds of Summer could just be the next ones to top the heap, so I picked up the Australian band's EP and gave it a listen: is it worth your time?