Stella Donnelly – Love and Fortune

On Love and Fortune, Stella Donnelly’s third LP, she takes a moment to pause and reflect. Thinking about the hardships she’s endured in recent years, the Melbourne singer-songwriter trades her barbed witticisms for more solemn and vulnerable expression.

But what hasn’t changed in Donnelly’s approach is her warm, down-to-earth nature, which she channels in compact, understated arrangements that demonstrate her natural ease and likeability. Counter to your usual breakup album, she instead copes with an irreparable friendship.

Donnelly’s thought process is as descriptive as it is vague, but it always sounds beautifully elegant. On the piano ballad “Year of Trouble,” she processes her pain quietly, with each increasing key culminating in a stark confession: “Since you closed off to me, I’ve been on a lonely ride.” Anecdotes go as quickly as they come on tracks like “Friend,” which, in less than a minute and a half, Donnelly writes of letters left unsent with bittersweet nostalgia over a sullen piano melody.

While Donnelly’s mood remains wistful throughout Love and Fortune, her music also conveys sweetness and joy. On “Feel It Change,” one of the more rhythmically robust and melodically persuasive songs here, she comes to terms with that absence over glimmers of chiming guitar. These moments of lightness are few and far between, but when they appear unexpectedly, like on the bright, the Cranberries-evoking “W.A.L.K.,” they reveal another view into her unique, intimate artistry.

Love and Fortune sounds miles away from an album like 2019’s Beware the Dogs, an album that established Donnelly as a bold voice in indie music—notably writing one of the #MeToo movement’s most potent anthems. The circumstances that led to her writing the album called for her to turn more inward, one that made her question if she even had one more in her.

In a surprising twist of fate, Donnelly’s confidence has heightened since, remaining just as honest to herself as ever. Maybe it’s not the showiest of returns, but instead, she proves that the toughest battles are the ones that happen inside us.

Love and Fortune is out now via Dot Dash Recordings.