Super Pyramid's "Comment if This Is Paradise!": A sonic journey through loss, wonder, and meaning.

Ben Rowley’s Super Pyramid transforms heartbreak, struggle, and resilience into a lush, dreamlike debut.

Super Pyramid by Ben Rowley is a project that reflects not only his artistic sensitivity but also his adventurous soul. Ben Rowley is indeed the driving force behind it. In brief, Rowley is the quintessence of a seeker, who not only writes songs but also performs, creates, and produces, along with incessant travel to the new lands, the new worlds of ideas, and the new sounds. After departing his native Vancouver, he rode his bicycle through Canada and eventually made a new artistic turn in Montreal. He found himself in a community of similarly inclined musicians and artists and thus started the process of making his first album as Super Pyramid, which confidently announces the existence of these unprecedented creative ideas.

Rowley’s music has resonance with 20th-century classics in the tradition of songwriting, but it is still experimental to the core, practically its modern side. In truth, the people he listens to are from the purest to the softest: Paul McCartney for the most melodic side and Tame Impala for the most dreamy, yet his music remains his own artistic personality—rich, complex, and personal. The artist’s life has been extremely challenging at times, and all these incidents have been the source of his artistic expression; thus, his works have a quality of honesty and vulnerability. Working with Isaac Symonds of Half Moon Run, Rowley took advantage of the most difficult situations to create stunning songs that portray the contrast between being strong and fragile simultaneously. As Super Pyramid, Rowley not only gives songs but offers complete experiences—journeying through the nights of melancholy and wonder, bleakness and light, and the unceasing human longing for the meaning of life.

"Comment if this is paradise!" is an ambitious debut full album from Super Pyramid, a journey far beyond the limits of the usual one.

The album is experimental and quite brave in its overall sonics, with intricacy of warm and vintage-sounding analogue signals and the appealing freshness of electronic music and mixing of the compositions with vulnerability expressed in a soft voice. In fact, the start of the album was far from being a smooth one. Apart from the coronavirus shutting down Rowley’s band and thus cancelling the tour, a breakup and a severe concussion also got in the way of making the album process go on several times. All these setbacks found their way into the music and somehow turned it into a piece reflective of the sombre mood of the situation.

The net result is an album that flirts with both the vulnerability aspect and the vastness one, a musing on letting go, desiring, and bouncing back.

The album is greatly helped by the skillful part played by Isaac Symonds (Half Moon Run), whose film-like scores and airy backing vocals give the album a certain out-of-time character. The two of them have blended the sound of the album to be an homage to such artists as Rufus Wainwright (for the ambitious aspect), Andy Shauf (for the closeness), and Broadcast (for the experimental type), yet at the same time, it is their very own sound, which they call Super Pyramid.

Among the tracks of the album, much can be said about the opener and first single, “Before & After You”, which is a mellow letting-go-of-the-love reflection with the piano and the vocals glittering like an old movie. “Better Angels” is the next song, having a rhythm that sounds cheerful at first glance but quite sad at the core; whereas “Slow & Easy” is different from the other tracks in that it tells a personal story, and at the same time, it includes the colorful orchestra; thus, lyrically, it is like Lennon, and instrumentally, it is like Pet Sounds. The acoustic “Never Better” is the last song on the album; it sings with the utmost honesty of the comedic side of the continuous quest for life’s message with a tone that is almost sarcastic.

The wording of the comment 'If This Is Paradise!' alone is playful as well as provocative. At first glance, it looks like engagement is what is going to be talked about; nonetheless, it is also about feeling, or rather, about how being able to do so means what paradise looks like, and how one can tell when it has come. Rowley achieves beauty by struggling, and consequently, he makes his debut with emotional truth and sonic grandeur that are highly infectious—at the same time, he allows people to linger in the enormous unknown and, hence, get to experience paradise in the very act of hunting for it.