Rowena Wise

Rowena Wise’s sophomore album Bad Things Feel Good\* is a tender, point-blank look at the pain of transformation, and what it means to be flesh and blood. It defines love and selfhood as a mosaic of light and dark, where the rules of negotiating desire, responsibility, devotion, and self-authenticity no longer hold. Through candid poetic lyricism and a raw live band production, the songs explore themes of heartbreak, estrangement and mental health, grounding the complexities of the human experience with relatability and emotional depth.

Written over the last couple of years of Rowena’s extensive touring schedule, Bad Things Feel Good\* was carved out of her own and her friends’ experiences of navigating the nuances of complicated relationships and mental health. The feeling of displacement that came with travelling so often allowed Rowena some perspective on the knottier growing pains of adulthood - love that deviates, longing that is existential, and moral vertigo. Rowena wrote the album from a place of exploring intimacy in its many forms - romantic, familial, communal - and the quiet inheritances we carry from them. The songs embody the discomfort of major shifts within her core identity, as well as others’ core identities within her community.