Stella Donnelly has shared ‘Flood’, the deceptively lilting title track/video from her forthcoming album, out 26th August on Secretly Canadian. The wistful yet life-affirming ‘Flood’ follows last month’s ‘Lungs’.
Directed by Donnelly, Nick McKk and Grace Goodwin, the accompanying ‘Flood’ video centres on an idyllic summer day — or at least Donnelly’s idiosyncratic version of one. “This clip is pure ridiculous play, like going to your grandparents’ house where you and your cousins would get up to the most elaborate film projects,” Donnelly says. “We always ran around the house making home movies that tried to re-enact other films and much like this clip here, they always ended in some sort of minor catastrophe. With this video for ‘Flood’ we have made a very feeble attempt at recreating the legendary OK GO video clip for ‘Here it Goes Again’ and we failed gloriously.”
Of ‘Flood‘ Donnelly says: “This song feels like a sad little adventure. I wrote it in the dark depths of a Melbourne winter lockdown where it had been raining for consecutive weeks. Everyone around me was falling into their own version of depression at different times. It felt like a flood of trauma yet at the same time, we were given an opportunity of time to work through stuff that we’d been distracting ourselves with for so long prior to the pandemic.”
According to the press release ‘Flood’ is Donnelly’s record of this rediscovery: the product of months of risky experimentation, hard moments of introspection, and a lot of moving around. With new locations came new approaches. “It freshened things up for sure”, Donnelly says, and writing with band members Jennifer Aslett, George Foster, Jack Gaby and Marcel Tussie, soon began to feel like kindergarten play, with co-producers Anna Laverty and Methyl Ethyl’s Jake Webb helping to foster an important spontaneity in the studio. This spontaneity saw Donnelly straying from her trusted electric guitar, instead moving to piano and imbuing her new work with a fluidity and vulnerability that befits ‘Flood’s introspective nature. Donnelly had not played much piano since her early childhood and there was something wonderfully playful and poignant about climbing back up onto the piano stool and finding her fingers. ‘Flood” revels in this.
Donnelly will embark on a world tour this autumn, including stops at Los Angeles, Chicago, Brooklyn, and a plethora of dates across Europe and the UK. Full dates are listed below and tickets are on sale now.
Stella Donnelly Tour Dates
June
27th Tivoli Vrendenburg, Utrecht, NL *
28th – Tivoli Vrendenburg, Utrecht, NL *
30th – Verti Music Hall, Berlin, DE *
July
3rd – Pointu Festival, Six-Fours-les-Plages, FR
7th – BBK Bilbao Festival, Biscay, ES
23rd – Splendour In The Grass, Byron Bay, AU
September
11th – Casbah, San Diego, CA
12th -The Fonda, Los Angeles
13th – Independent, San Francisco
15th – Mississippi Studios, Portland
16th – Biltmore Cabaret, Vancouver
17th – Neumos, Seattle
21st – Fine Line Music Cafe, Minneapolis
22nd – Lincoln Hall, Chicago
23rd – Sanctuary, Detroit
24th – Longboat Hall, Toronto
26th – Boston, MA @ Crystal Ballroom
28th – Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere
30th – Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live
October
1st – Washington, DC @ Songbyrd
November
1 – Wardrobe, Leeds, UK
2 – Mono, Glasgow
3 – Band On The Wall @ Manchester
4 – Whelan’s, Dublin
6 – Zanzibar , Liverpool
8 – Metronome , Nottingham
9 – Thekla , Bristol
10 – Electric Brixton, London
12 – The Gate, Cardiff
13 – Hare and Hounds , Birmingham
14 – Komedia, Brighton
16 – FMR, Paris
17 – Artheatre , Cologne
18 – Rotonde – Botanique, Brussels
19 – Bitterzoet, Amsterdam, NL
21 – Molotow Skybar, Hamburg, DE
22 – Hotel Cecil. Copenhagen, DK
24 – Badehaus, Berlin, DE
25th – Strom, Munich, DE !
* w/ Mitski
! w/ Julia Jacklin
Photo Credit: Emma Daisy
