Before releasing her first full-length album, Stella Donnelly had been performing for a decade. She busked as a teenager in her native Australia, later playing regularly in bands throughout her early twenties. By 25, she earned critical acclaim for her first solo EP, Thrush Metal, featuring intimate yet intense songs like “Boys Will Be Boys,” which takes a hard look at society’s blind eye to rape culture and how devastating that is to women.
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By every measure, Donnelly was a seasoned pro even before most listeners had ever heard of her. But once she began to build up critical acclaim for her debut EP, that attention interfered with her creative process. More keenly aware of just how much was riding on her being able to deliver a successful record, she began writing the songs for her first full-length, Beware Of The Dogs, she temporarily developed a case of writer’s block.
“All of a sudden there were people watching me,” she says in a phone call from Australia. “Prior to that, no one gave a shit. I was very much free to lurk around in that territory where no one was watching what I do, and no one’s livelihoods depended on what I was doing. I felt this pressure. I just thought, ‘Oh my god, have I lost that now?’”
Spoiler: She didn’t. Giving herself time away from the stage to write at home in Freemantle, Donnelly emerged with Beware Of The Dogs, released in March via Secretly Canadian. It’s a step forward from her stripped-down debut — bold, confident and fully formed. She’s backed by a full band, expanding her intimate, alternately funny and intense songs into a more diverse expression of her inner monologue. Her songs have a breezy, jangly sensibility, not unlike fellow Aussies Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, that often works harmoniously with her narratives. On “Season’s Greetings,” her shimmering sheets of guitar underscore a hilarious family holiday argument: “Why can’t you be more like your mother was when she was young?/ And all your idiot cousins like her more than all the other aunties/ Because she was a punk.”
But Donnelly doesn’t miss an opportunity to speak truth to power, as she does on leadoff track, “Old Man,” taking down patriarchal abuses that have stood in the way of so many women. “I’ve worked too hard for this chance to not be biting the hand that feeds the hate,” she sings. “You grab me with an open hand, the world is grabbing back at you.”
When Donnelly tackles institutionalized sexism as she does on a song like “Old Man,” she says, it’s not because she feels an obligation to address something topical. It’s more simple than that: She’s affected by it.
“I feel like they all relate back to me,” she says. “Those issues have directly affected me at some point in my life or are affecting me now. It’s easy to call something ‘political’ when it’s not affecting you. ‘Old Man’ is an amalgamation of experiences I’ve had or I’ve witnessed, and I’m witnessing now, whether it’s in my close world or a bit broader than that. I think that’s the only way I could write about it really. I would struggle to go that deep if I hadn’t been affected by it.”
“Boys Will Be Boys,” which previously appeared on Thrush Metal, also appears on Donnelly’s new LP. It’s a poignant and cutting song about a friend who was raped, and the excuses made for men who rape: “Why was she all alone, wearing her shirt that low/ They said ‘boys will be boys,’ deaf to the word ‘no.’” It’s starker and darker than much of the rest of the album, but even if it’s a slight change to the character of the album, Donnelly saw it necessary to include.
“I felt as though that song still needed to be heard,” she says. “So I unfortunately feel the need to keep performing and talking about that song because I don’t feel enough has been done about the issue I’m singing and writing about. If I feel like it needs to be on the next album, it will. That song still hurts, and that’s still a good reason to get it out there.”
Donnelly’s still getting used to the attention paid to her music, but she’s gotten over the writer’s block and the brief moment of self-consciousness that overcame her. She is, however, still getting used to the idea of playing on different continents and hearing different languages every night. But she’s tackled every challenge she’s faced so far — this is just another part of the job.
“I’d be playing six nights a week in various acts, and that much didn’t change,” she says. “But added to that was a flight and a city and then a different city and new people. All those things, it was a massive adjustment for me, and even health-wise, I don’t drink when I go on tour. I treat it like a job in a way. When you treat it like a job, you can end up having loads of fun because you end up with some pleasant surprises.”
