Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Rowena Wise has a gift for writing about the things most people struggle to articulate, and ‘Unlearning of Love’ might be the most ambitious demonstration of that gift yet. Written alongside producer Robert Muinos, who also plays guitar on the track, with Jess Ellwood on drums, Richard Bradbeer on bass and Matt Dixon on pedal steel guitar, this is a song constructed with extraordinary care and performed with even more.

It opens in a place of quiet intimacy. The instrumentation arrives delicately, each element given its own space and clarity, nothing cluttering the room, everything serving the song. Rowena’s vocals are the centrepiece from the first bar: gorgeous, controlled and completely present, delivering the lyrics with an emotional precision that makes every line land exactly where it should. “Tell me, fellow driftwood / sit beside me down on the sand / I’ll listen and give you comfort / I have no answers but I’ll hold you“: this is writing that understands what genuine tenderness sounds like, and the performance matches it completely.

The drums arrive gradually, nudging the song forward with a quiet inevitability, winding the momentum upward through a middle section that builds with real patience and real purpose. Nothing is rushed. Nothing is forced. When the full climax eventually arrives, everything performing at its peak simultaneously, the vocals rising to meet the surge of sound beneath them, it earns every second of the journey to get there. It is rousing and powerful and completely overwhelming in the best possible way.

Then it drops away. Just the vocals, stripped bare, left alone in the room. It’s a choice that takes courage and lands perfectly.

The final single before her sophomore album ‘Bad Things Feel Good’ opened fully to the world, ‘Unlearning of Love’ is a remarkable piece of music.