Self-Loathing Narcissist is the latest installment in Levi Rowan’s pop stardom trajectory.
Matt Carter
Self-Loathing Narcissist is the latest installment in Levi Rowan’s pop stardom trajectory. Clean, tight, and bursting with radio-ready hooks on par with those of the genre’s top performers, Rowan continues to prove that yes indeed, he’s got something special going on.
“I decided early on that I wanted to go deep on this project,” said Rowan, who has always used his music as a means of catharsis. Going all the way back to his 2016 EP, Nude Beach, Rowan has used his music to distill his worries and self-doubt, to answer life’s questions and to ask new ones. Now, several releases later, his exploration of life has simply become his method of operation. As fodder for writing pop hits, is there anything better?
While his entire catalog could be summed up as one artist’s search for identity and knowing, Rowan, with help from Executive Producer Corey Lerue and fellow collaborators Adrian Morris, Frank Kadillac and Apriskah, has been able to keep a lot of what makes albums work at the centre of Self-Loathing Narcissist. Across the nine songs on this release, variety in tempo, tone and theme help keep things exciting. No two tracks sound like one another. From the straight-up melodic hooks that anchor tracks like Let It Go and True Romance to the instrumental change-ups and lyrical honesty shared through songs like Let Me Sleep and Hey!, it’s hard to find fault in the album’s overall construction, production and pacing.
“Cuts like Let Me Sleep and On The Road are examples of personal issues I’ve been working through for some time, but I make music so I work them out on records,” said Rowan. “I also wanted to make sure I had some real feel good songs that would make my younger self proud, Marathon and Let It Go fill that void for me. And there’s plenty more in there to soak up for anyone who gives it a listen.
“It’s essentially a snapshot of my year, going through the trials and tribulations of your early 20s, learning to let go of the past by using music as a sort of therapy and growing through good times and bad.”
Photo: SameAsForever
