Stella Donnelly - Love and Fortune

The cover of this third album from Stella Donnelly is instructive; it depicts a swimmer by the side of the pool, clearly having reservations about getting in. When she finished her last round of touring, in support of 2022’s ‘Flood’, the Melbourne native was unsure of where she stood relative to her music, and considered the possibility that she might have fallen out of love with songwriting. ‘Love and Fortune’ dispels that notion; comprising eleven gorgeously-drawn portraits of uncertainty, self-discovery and homecoming, it is Stella’s most expressive and vulnerable work to date. 

There is breezy, melodic indie rock here (‘Being Nice’, ‘Feel It Change’) but also a lot of meditative minimalism; ‘Baths’ is case in point, a vocals-only track that has Stella spilling out her feelings in piecemeal, snapshot fashion, while ‘Year of Trouble’ is a piano ballad that offers a more comprehensive picture of the rut she evidently found herself in post-‘Flood’. Sometimes, there are both sides of the record contained within the same song, as is the case with ‘W.A.L.K.’, which starts slowly, quietly and deliberately, before bursting into optimistic life at the mid-point. This is one of the most honest records of the year, in that Stella Donnelly doesn’t just tell us that her thoughts have been vacillating; ‘Love and Fortune’ actually sounds uncertain, like an album picking its way methodically through a crisis. It’s really mature songwriting, and makes for a lovely, reflective listen.