Stella Donnelly

Sun Sep 11 2022 at 08:30 pm

2501 Kettner Blvd San Diego CA 92101 | San Diego

Casbah San Diego
Publisher/HostCasbah San Diego
Stella Donnelly
Stella Donnelly - Flood

Like the many Banded Stilts that spread across the cover of her newest album Flood,
Stella Donnelly is wading into uncharted territory. Here, she finds
herself discovering who she is as an artist among the flock, and how
abundant one individual can be. Flood is Donnelly’s record of this rediscovery: the product of months of risky experimentation, hard moments of introspection, and a lot of moving around.

Her
early reflections on the relationship between the individual and the
many can be traced back to Donnelly’s time in the rainforests of
Bellingen, where she took to birdwatching as both a hobby and an escape
in a border-restricted world. By paying closer attention to the natural
world around her, she recalls “I was able to lose that feeling of
anyone’s reaction to me. I forgot who I was as a musician, which was a
humbling experience of just being; being my small self.”

Reconnecting
with the ‘small self’ allowed Donnelly to tap into creative wells she
didn’t know existed. Soon songs were coming to her in a way she could
not control and over the coming months, Donnelly accumulated 43 tracks
as she moved out of Bellingen and around the country, often finding
herself displaced due to border restrictions, a tough rental market, and
once from the joys of finding black mould in the walls.

“I
had so many opportunities to write things in strange places,” Donnelly
remarks, having passed through Fremantle, Williams, Guilderton, Margaret
River and Melbourne. “I often had no choice about where I was. There’s
no denying that not being able to access your family with border
closures, it zooms in on those parts of your life you care about.”

With
new locations came new approaches. “It freshened things up for sure,”
Donnelly says, and writing with band members Jennifer Aslett, George
Foster, Jack Gaby and Marcel Tussie, soon began to feel like
kindergarten play. “They all brought themselves to the record in such a
beautiful way. A lot of us were playing instruments that weren’t our
first instrument: me on piano, Jack doing all these synth sounds, George
trying a bunch of stuff out, Marcel sang! We were all like ‘plink
plonk’; it was quite vulnerable for all of us.”

Along
with the support of her band members, co-producing the record beside
Anna Laverty and Methyl Ethyl’s Jake Webb helped to foster an important
spontaneity in the studio. With Webb, Donnelly could “dig in” and
discover a “forward-leaning sound” she’d been searching for, while
Laverty’s ability to “capture the piano” and discern the “perfect take”
allowed the songwriter to take further risks.

Straying
from the easier option of writing on an electric guitar, Donnelly’s
move to piano imbues her new work with a fluidity and vulnerability that
befits the record’s introspective nature. Donnelly had not played much
piano – what she fondly calls “a very easy instrument to fuck up” –
since her early childhood and there was something wonderfully playful
and poignant about climbing back up onto the piano stool and finding her
fingers. Flood revels in this.

In
“Restricted Account”, the piano quietly dances back and forth with her
vocals, while the warmth of the fluegelhorn blooms above; piano again
drives the band along in “Move Me” as the understated horn returns and
Donnelly later aptly sings, “You’re the bit that holds us all together”.
These patterns flicker across the record, dispelling any fears of the
record turning out disjointed from its origin story. Much of the album
is ultimately united by Donnelly’s intuitive songwriting, where
listeners can expect commanding assertive verses, euphoric shimmery
choruses and killer bridges; and just when you think you really know
what to expect, something alien will arrive: the offspring of the band’s
“plink plonking”.

Subverting expectations and
keeping people on their toes has long been a strategy of the ‘firstborn’
in Donnelly. “I can’t sit on something for too long,” she laughs, “it’s
an oldest child thing: you strive to entertain; you’ve got to fight for
your spot to keep someone engaged.” The child’s fight for their spot at
the table, both in and out of the home, appears throughout Flood in
different personas; one offers a bold exclamation about being a child
the rest of her life, while another grapples over whether to wear or
throw away her beads from when she was five. In “Morning Silence”, one
declares “Same old fight was had today / Great grandchild will see the
same.”

Throughout the record, Donnelly looks back
at history and wonders where she’s come from and where she’ll go next.
In opener “Lungs” we hear her plead, “History again teach me like a
friend what you know and why,” and this curiosity extends into many of
the songs exploring relationships, be them familial, romantic or
platonic.

“I do love observing human dynamics,”
Donnelly says. “Dynamics between old best friends, or dynamics between
housemates, or a relationship where the two people are broken up and
haven’t spoken in years. I like getting into the mind of someone who
we’ve all been at some point.” This interest expresses itself in a
unique way on the record as Donnelly regularly ‘plays dress-up’,
adopting different faces and personas to help her distill her truest
self. In “Lungs” she writes from the point of view of a child whose
family has just been evicted, while “Flood” invites us to look through
the eyes of someone dating Donnelly, with lyrics frank and at times
damning.

Looking back at the Banded Stilt,
Donnelly ultimately appreciates how when “seen in a crowd they create an
optical illusion, but on its own it’s this singular piece of art.”
While each song on Flood is a singular artwork unto itself, the collectiveshares
all of Stella Donnelly in abundance: her inner child, her nurturing
self, her nightmare self; all of herself has gone into the making of
this record, and although it would take an ocean to fathom everything
she feels, it’s well worth diving in.


Event Venue

2501 Kettner Blvd San Diego CA 92101, San Diego, United States

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