Abortion law, abusive men and Australian nationalism are among the issues tackled on the indie-pop musician’s debut album. But she says she has ‘blind confidence’ that things will change
When Stella Donnelly recorded the songs for her debut release, she was comforted that Melbourne label Healthy Tapes was pressing only 30 cassettes. “It gave me the confidence to make a demo-sounding EP,” she says. What she didn’t know was that when the shaggily acoustic Thrush Metal arrived in April 2017, Healthy Tapes also uploaded it to Spotify. Unprompted, the streaming giant added the stark, self-flagellating Mechanical Bull to an influential playlist. Soon Donnelly’s inbox was filled with emails from the Australian labels and managers that she had never met as a DIY scrapper in Fremantle, thousands of miles from Australia’s music industry.
She opted to remain independent in Australia (later signing to Secretly Canadian for the rest of the world). Donnelly’s big break came six months later. Another song, Boys Will Be Boys, started building steam. Written after a friend was sexually assaulted, it sketches the contours of rape culture in deft, devastating observations that saw critics compare Donnelly to countrywoman Courtney Barnett: “Why was she all alone / Wearing her shirt that low? / They said, ‘Boys will be boys’ / Deaf to the word ‘no’.”
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