Stella DonnellyAustralia has a long history of literate, insightful songwriters picking up a guitar and writing about their lives. In a just world, success would be based on talent alone, but sadly, this is Australia in 2026, and even some of Australia’s best songwriters, a decade into their careers and still living in a sharehouse, struggle to find the audience they deserve.
The audience Stella Donnelly has found, however, is a deeply committed one, and tonight, the first night of two sold-out shows at Melbourne’s Corner Hotel, is a love-in – a place where failure seems impossible.
Donnelly generates so much affection from her fans that it’s telling who she chooses to bring into her world. The last time she played in Melbourne, in 2023, Mia June and Jade Imagine played some of their biggest shows ever to a crowd high on their love for the headliner. As this writer wrote the morning after, “it’s pretty hard to pick holes in a perfect show.” Tonight, local singer-songwriter Hannah McKittrick and recent Perth transplant Ullah are equally excellent choices of opening acts.
McKittrick is first to the stage, accompanied by seated bassist and guitarist Theo Carbo and drummer Ollie Cox. Over carefully stroked guitar and imaginatively sparse arrangements, McKittrick’s hushed, reverb-drenched vocals anchor one of the best-sounding performances the Corner Hotel has hosted in years.
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The sense of presence (both in physical terms and as a quality of ambience) is arresting as, framed by straight, long blonde hair, a piercing gaze, and quietly roiling waves of valve-crunch distortion, teetering on the edge of feedback, McKittrick guides us through a batch of gentle odes to fractured relationships and keening insights. The trio close their set with its strongest song, Beacon of Love, which releases the tension in a glorious, sustained burst of almost shoegaze intensity. McKittrick thanks Donnelly for the chance to play.
“She’s a badass, a rockstar, and, before I went on, a loaner of lemon myrtle deodorant,” McKittrick says. “She’s a great example of how you can be an anarchist and a sweetheart at the same time.”
The reason some members of the crowd are wearing homemade, bedazzled felt crowns becomes clear the minute Ullah takes to the stage. Fresh from winning triple j Unearthed and playing at Perth’s Laneway Festival, it is astonishing how many people in the room already love a band that seemed to have arrived in Melbourne about half an hour ago. Thirty seconds in, it begins to make sense.
“Hello,” says singer-songwriter Ullah Annert, dressed in a coral pink dress layered with tulle and sporting a crown and a warm smile. “We are really glad to be here, but… we really wish we were fish”. The rest of the band, all wearing shirts, ties and a homemade starfish around their necks, deliver an extraordinarily thoughtful backing to the song I Wish We Were Fish.
The textured guitar from Greta, nimble drumming from Jac (“no ‘K’, because I’m half-Welsh”, he later explains) Donnelly and busy-but-not-too-busy bass from Omri Samorali is a gift to Annert’s songs. Ullah evoke the bright indie pop Australia excelled at in the mid-1990s, paired with the wiry energy of Life Without Buildings and the sort of innovation that a lover of the genre might have thought had vanished.
Nowhere is this more apparent than on their third song, What Nightmares Are Made Of, which takes an instantly memorable pop chorus (“Pity love / Group hugs / Dog fights / I keep running yellow lights”) and uses it to bookend a quiet prose poem about ageing and generational differences. It’s a fascinatingly odd creation. Songs like Neve and the Ladybugs, Racetrack and the euphoric fear-embracing closer I Want it All showcase a distinctive songwriter and a band simply too interesting to ignore.
At precisely the appointed time, 10:40 pm, the curtains part and Stella Donnelly strides, beaming, onto the stage. The last time we saw her was at a packed-out show at the Northcote Theatre as part of a lengthy national tour. This time, Donnelly has said, she wanted to do fewer, smaller shows, which gives this one a real sense of occasion.
Donnelly opens with the a capella Baths, a song about childhood memories that connects her to her Welsh roots, before thanking us all for being here and telling us how glad she is to be back on stage. Then, she pauses. “This next song is about bleeding profusely, which I am tonight,” she grins, introducing Standing Ovation, the opening track of Love and Fortune, the album she is launching tonight. Lunch, the crowd-rousing track from her 2019 album Beware of the Dogs, follows with much of the room joining in for its chorus, “I get homesick before I go away.”
Multiskilled guitarist, keyboard player and harmony vocalist Sophie Ozard stands stage left alongside the equally talented Julia Wallace, and the pair deepen Donnelly’s songs beautifully. Regular drummer and longtime Donnelly collaborator Marcel Tussie is “in playing with bloody fucking Rolling Blackouts in bloody fucking Adelaide”, Donnelly explains, before apologising to anyone from Adelaide. Instead, Donnelly’s brother has stepped in and locks in beautifully with bassist and sometime music video director Jack Gaby.
Donnelly moves to the keyboards for a stunning rendition of Flood, and Laying Low, another song from her latest album that she takes a moment to liken to a G-string. “I’ve used this metaphor before,” she explains. “But playing new songs is like trying on new undies, and this one is like a tight G-string that’s getting right up your arse. We’ll get to some big undies with holes later,” she promises.
One of the strongest songs from Love and Fortune is the slow-burning Feel it Change, the latest example of what Donnelly does best - blending effulgent melodies with everyday turns of phrase to interrogate sensitive and complex subjects.
When she moves into the chorus, “I love you baby, but I’m scared to be near ya / It’s not the same, it’s not the same when you’re here”, it’s a masterclass in using songwriting to make connections. To reframe abusive relationships and domestic violence within a pop melody and a wide smile, the way Donnelly does, seems almost miraculous.
After Boys Will Be Boys, a stark song about a friend’s disclosure of a sexual assault, she again manages to effortlessly switch tone. After accepting the applause and wiping away tears, Donnelly sighs and says, “Well, anyway. Here’s a song about a vibrator”. Mosquito earns one of the crowd’s loudest sing-alongs as she grins her way through an unassuming song about self-pleasure, beautifully undercut by the observation: “I wanna bring you cake back home from work, but you’re allergic”. It’s hard to imagine anyone else managing the shift and taking a whole room with them.
As the closing time of 11:40 pm approaches, Donnelly takes us through Old Man, W.A.L.K and brings two excited fans up on stage to participate in the spontaneously choreographed pop banger, Die. It’s impossible not to smile along with Donnelly as she doesn’t increasingly daft dance moves between singing the lines, “You know that I love you, wanna buy you more shit / But I can't afford it, but I can't afford it? / And I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die”.
After some deep breaths, hugs and thanks, Donnelly brings Ullah out on stage for a glorious version of Chappell Roan’s The Subway that, incredibly, doesn’t feel out of place in the set we’ve just heard. Donnelly makes it her own by taking Roan’s hook “Fuck this city, I’m moving to Saskatchewan” with “Adelaide!” cracking the crowd up even as they’re mid-volley.
The band leave the stage for an appropriately short amount of time before returning to close the album launch with the magnificent Tricks. Tricks, of course, the last thing Donnelly needs with skills and friends like these.
