Ashton Irwin

Biography

Hailing from Sydney, Australia and globally recognized as the drummer in pop-rock quartet 5 Seconds of Summer, Ashton Irwin has a new album, BLOOD ON THE DRUMS. 

The band, formed in 2011, have sold over 18 million albums, 6 million concert tickets and amassed streaming figures that top 10 billion, with diehard fans populated right around the globe. But there are some ideas fizzing around the 29-year-old singer and multi-instrumentalist’s brain that fall by the wayside when it comes to the group. That’s where his inventive and ambitious solo work comes in – his second solo record, the aforementioned BLOOD ON THE DRUMS is a forward-thinking collection of songs that takes in infectious 80s-tinged anthems, barbed rock bangers, dubby art-pop and more. Irwin sounds like he's fully relishing a temporary excursion away from the day job. “The band’s sound is like a big soup that’s made up of where everyone’s taste is at,” he says, “whereas with me I have my eye and ear set on something pretty clearly that I know I want to make.” 

BLOOD ON THE DRUMS is the follow-up to his 2020 solo debut Superbloom, an album that combined Irwin’s love of Foo Fighters, My Bloody Valentine, Silverchair, Nick Drake and more with his knack for an indelible pop hook. Made during the pandemic (remember that?), it was musical art steeped in personal reflection and poignant contemplation. Here, he has crafted a much more outward-facing body of work, one that weaves through the highs and lows of his life over the past decade and emerges with songs built to connect on a mass scale, where universal themes are wrapped around personal tales. “I was thinking about the people I left behind, the people I miss, the family that I had to leave when I was young, thinking about the addictions I’ve been through, the way I evolved as a young man who never had a father, thinking about my personal strength and knowing that no-one else has my back but me and becoming someone that I have to be for the rest of my life,” he says. 

The album began alongside Superbloom producer Matthew Pauling, with the pair working on the emotive, instantly catchy and multi-layered The Canyon (exploring the theme of male suicide beneath its summery surface) and barbed, riff-laden rocker Breakup, those sessions serving as an apt bridge between the two projects. “I wanted those songs to be like a contemporary hybrid of 70s stuff, both recorded to tape and warm and saturated sounding records.” 

That was the starting point, but the record truly began to take shape when Irwin returned from a trip to Australia at the beginning of the year and teamed up with an old friend and producer John Feldmann. “I came back to LA in January with a vengeance and started working with John and it was hitting on all the things I wanted,” Irwin says. “Obviously his drum recordings are so amazing. This record is called BLOOD ON THE DRUMS and as a drummer and with people predominantly knowing me as a drummer, I went ‘This album needs frickin’ amazing drums, it needs to sound incredible’.” 

With Feldmann helping to hone Irwin’s vision of a record that mixed rock dynamism and slick contemporary pop production, the singer found himself channeling a handful of 80s solo superstars who deliver yearning emotion on the grandest scale. “It’s people like Bryan Adams and Bruce Springsteen, these big stadium-rock male vocalists who never seem to age. I was thinking, ‘‘Well damn, I’m not gonna want to age soon as well so how about I write some stuff that sounds pretty lethal in terms of its writing and contemporary edge but really explore my vocal presence’.” 

On the driving urgency of opening track Straight To Your Heart, Irwin pays homage to his new wave heroes. “I was referencing Echo And The Bunnymen, INXS, Blondie and The Church, these moody pop-rock acts from the 80s and 80s,” he states. 

Elsewhere, there’s wistful folk that’s gently lifted skyward on California Holds Her Breath, pulsing, widescreen pop on Rebel At Heart, exhilarating hooks on Lose You, breezy balladry on Last Night Of My Life and an R&B swagger on Marry You, the record eventually leading to the door of sprawling Pink Floydian closer Endless Wave. 

It's a brilliant album that captures Irwin in his element, caught in the thrill of the moment, doing his best to keep up with the ideas his brain keeps firing out. “A lot of this was sharpening the intuitive feelings of what I should do and acting on them, knowing to trust myself and trust the process and knowing it can be really effective if I trust it.” BLOOD ON THE DRUMS is the sound of Ashton Irwin making a monumental statement as a solo artist. 

 

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