"Stella Donnelly didn't want to write songs about a friend who broke her heart. But any time the Welsh Australian singer-songwriter tried to channel anything else into her lyrics, the hurt was always there on the surface. We have a language for coping with romantic heartbreak, learned from movies and songs but there are fewer mirrors in art for coping with the end of platonic bonds."
"When it happened to her, Donnelly felt powerless, realising no amount of questioning or reaching out is going to work. I'd never come up against that in my life. Any tensions in other friendships she'd had previously could be talked through; this time, she was having a conversation with herself. It's so heavy and, for me, never resolved, she says. Ever. As much as the 33-year-old tried not to write about it, it sprang up each time she touched an instrument."
Stella Donnelly's third album Love and Fortune centers on the dull ache of being rejected by a once-intimate friend. The songs repeatedly return to unresolved platonic heartbreak that resisted explanation or reconciliation. Lyrics describe unsent letters on "Friends," hiding and avoiding gigs on "Ghosts," birdwatching memories on "Please Everyone," and calmer closure on "Laying Low." Donnelly wrote much of the record while biking around Melbourne's northern suburbs and used bird imagery as a symbol of evolution. The album functions as both offering and journal, channeling powerlessness, repeated resurfacing of hurt, and gradual emotional recalibration.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]