Rowena Wise - Bad Things Feel Good* [Blue]

Rowena Wise's debut album, Senseless Acts of Beauty, was shortlisted for the 2024 Australian Music Prize, which is the kind of start that tempts a songwriter to play it safe the second time around. Bad Things Feel Good* does the opposite. The asterisk in the title is the whole point: on this record every pleasure arrives with a footnote, and the Melbourne-based songwriter, raised in Margaret River, Western Australia, reads the fine print out loud.

The album was recorded live over three days at Rat Shack Studios in Collingwood with producer Rob Muinos, bassist Richard Bradbeer and drummer Jess Ellwood, and it sounds like it. The arrangements are restrained and close, built around a band playing together in a room, so Wise's voice can rise and fall in real time. "Home in This World" and "More Horizon" open the record with an indie rock pulse, while "Blood Ties," "Unlearning of Love" and the title track sit in darker, slower-burning territory.

Lyrically it is a record about transformation without the tidy ending. Wise writes about heartbreak, estrangement, imperfect parents and inherited patterns with a candor that is poetic but never precious, and she resists the neat redemption arc at every turn. It is a sharper, braver album than its predecessor, and one that rewards close listening.

This UK import edition presents all ten tracks on blue colored vinyl.