Review: Rowena Wise — Bad Things Feel Good*

Rowena Wise
Bad Things Feel Good*
22TWENTY
Street: 08.07.2026
Rowena Wise = Marika Hackman + Julien Baker + Sharon Van Etten

Naarm/Melbourne-based indie folk artist Rowena Wise returns with her second record, Bad Things Feel Good*. The album maintains and grows her style from her previous Senseless Acts of Beauty — strummy, fuzzy, sometimes twangy guitar and distinct driving drumbeats. Senseless Acts of Beauty introduced Wise’s quintessential sharp honesty, which Bad Things Feel Good* takes to another level; Wise opens doors to gray corners where we might not necessarily want to venture, but probably should.

Instead of opening with a catchy, upbeat track to draw listeners in, Wise begins the album with “Home In This World.” She’s accompanied only by her guitar as she sings “I don’t feel at home in this world anymore.” The numb and dissociative nature of the lyrics lets listeners know that this record isn’t kicks and giggles. It’s also a starting place for the journey ahead. Following “Home In This World,” the beat kicks in with “More Horizon.”

The tracks that follow weave in and out of different complexities. “Blood Ties” was released as a single earlier this year, and after a few listens where all my attention was on the jammy sound and catchy melody, the lyrics finally reached me through the beat. This is not a fun summer driving song but a contemplation of complicated family dynamics that gestures to generational trauma. So maybe don’t play it as a summer driving song.

I love the strum pattern in “No Angel.” There’s something about the musicality of this track that melds so well with the lyrics: “I’m no angel / stop looking at me like I’m not human.” Perhaps it’s the absolute humanity bleeding from the music as Wise makes this request? “Sum Of Two” and “The Anchor” both immediately reminded me of Julien Baker. If a song can do that, I know its emotions are for real.

“Diamond In The Rough” brings the energy back upward. Another song released as a single earlier this year, it’s reminiscent of Sharon Van Etten. Wise blatantly reminds listeners of their humanity: “But don’t believe what you’ve been told / You’re made of flesh, you’re made of blood / You are enough.” The song ends with strings that have an almost human timbre. “Unlearning Of Love” is a deconstruction — guess what we’re deconstructing. The song grows more fuzzy and loud the longer it goes on, like the music itself is escaping its restrictions.

“Bad Things Feel Good” is the highlight of the album and the title track for a reason. Twangy guitar skips over a low, walking beat while the earnest lyrics wash in like tides: “I threw away the moral compass / the needle’s wigging out / I’m following my heart now.” The song is a release of old rules about what is moral and good, the chorus repeating “Will they let me into heaven with a fake ID? / the bad things are feeling good.” This one’s for all you religious trauma survivors doing your best to remake your world.

At this point in the album, the music and lyrics have reached such a contrast from the adrift “Home In This World.” We’ve been through a reckoning. Instead of staying adrift, we’ve looked inside at all the tangled and complicated parts that make us human. Bringing us home, “Days Ahead” is just voice and very gentle piano, the kind where you can hear the dampers clicking and the echoes rasping over the wood of the soundboard. Wise’s voice is full of texture as she switches from raspy to soft to whispery to full, bringing every human resonance together in one melody.

“I think I made this record while trying to understand how to live with contradiction,” Wise said in her Instagram post announcing the album. The tracks on Bad Things Feel Good* extract those contradictions in all their complex glory and show us that they are completely normal and human. Instead of rejecting them, Wise embraces them. —Rebekah Bowman

Read more by Rebekah Bowman:
Rewriting the Rules of Feminine Rage: Bree Despain’s The Killing Rules
Film Review: Heartstopper Forever

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