LUKE HEMMINGS - WHEN FACING THE THINGS WE TURN AWAY FROM
Luke Hemmings is back in a way we have not seen before. When Facing The Things We Turn Away From is a mature exploration of mental health, growing older, and coming to terms with oneself away from the demands of others.
Midway through the year and Luke Hemmings is back, in a way we have not seen before. On August 13th, Hemmings released his debut solo album, When Facing the Things We Turn Away From; a deeply introspective project, each track searching and desperate and larger than just Hemmings’ own personal experiences. Centring things such as mental health, addiction, questioning oneself and developing, on many levels, a functional relationship with one’s sense of identity and purpose. This was inherent in the album’s first single, ‘Starting Line’, in which Hemmings implores ‘I wake up every morning with the years ticking by / I’m missing all these memories, maybe they were never mine’ and ‘I think I missed the gun at the starting line.’ The production on this song (Sammy Witte) is exactly what the song needed; from plosive drums to pressing guitar riffs, ‘Starting Line’ is a soaring, emotional stage-setter for the rest of the album, one that will translate well in a live performance.
The album’s second track, ‘Saigon’, is where the album’s title originates; in this track, and across the album, Hemmings ruminates on times past and perhaps, not remembered or appreciated as they could have been; ‘lets pick apart until there’s nothing left of us to carry on / now we’re facing the things we turn away from’, he sings in the chorus. ‘Motion’, too, deals with similar themes; the album’s third track is exhausting, consistently building to a full, heavy outro, guitars in constant motion. ‘All my desires are made of my arrogance’, Hemmings realises, as he grapples his own mind and struggles to find mental clarity; the chaos of the song, then, reflects the emotional state from which the song was written.
If ‘Motion’ is tiring for the listener, the track that follows is a necessary respite. ‘Place In Me’ delivers vulnerability, woven through layers of processed(compressed?) background vocals and over delicate piano touches. Entering the bridge, the piano takes focus, providing the musical clarity that comes from questioning life, essentially, in the way that Hemmings does on this album.
On other tracks, Hemmings comes to terms with the consequences of seeking distractions outside of himself, as a means of coping with fame at such a young age, and the churning release-tour-release cycle of artists in the music industry. In ‘Repeat’, Hemmings warns that ‘you [can] run from tomorrow / but the madness catches up’. Similarly, in ‘Bloodline’, the album’s most stripped-down track, he recounts ‘there ain’t no warning the first time / ain’t no one to tell you “run, boy, run” / like I should’ve done’.
Time and getting older is also a recurring theme across the album; on ‘Diamonds’, a personal favourite, Hemmings admits he’s ‘so much older than [he] ever thought [he’d] be’. He himself described the song as the “most honest” he’s ever been, in reflecting on the whirlwind experience that is being a member of 5 Seconds Of Summer and catapulting to fame at only 15 years old. When Facing The Things We Turn Away From is a mature exploration of mental health, growing older, and coming to terms with oneself away from the demands of others.
Francesca Dunlop
★★★★★