Statement from Stella Donnelly: “Hi everyone. Just wanted to get in touch with you about some upcoming changes to my UK/EUR tour. I’ve been navigating being back on the road with a degree of difficulty and have made the very hard decision in the best interest in preserving my health to cancel my shows in Liverpool, Nottingham, Birmingham and Hamburg. Implementing breaks in the touring schedule will make this upcoming run more manageable and allow me to deliver the best show possible for the remaining dates. To those affected, I apologise unreservedly. I hope you may be able to make it to another show, otherwise we are looking forward to making it up to you in the new year. 

Thank you for your understanding. I can’t wait to see you all!”

Like the many Banded Stilts that spread across the cover of her newest album ‘Flood’, Stella Donnelly is wading into uncharted territory. Here, she finds herself discovering who she is as an artist among the flock, and how abundant one individual can be. 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.

Donnelly’s early reflections on the relationship between the individual and the many can be traced back to her time in the rainforests of Bellingen, where she took to birdwatching as both a hobby and an escape in a border-restricted world. By paying closer attention to the natural world around her, Donnelly recalls “I was able to lose that feeling of anyone’s reaction to me. I forgot who I was as a musician, which was a humbling experience of just being; being my small self.” Reconnecting with this ‘small self’ allowed Donnelly to tap into creative wells she didn’t know existed.

Looking back at the Banded Stilt, Donnelly ultimately appreciates how when “seen in a crowd they create an optical illusion, but on its own it’s this singular piece of art.” While each song in Flood is a singular artwork unto itself, the collective shares all of Stella Donnelly in abundance: her inner child, her nurturing self, her nightmare self; all of herself has gone into the making of this record, and although it would take an ocean to fathom everything she feels, it’s well worth diving in.