You Broke All The Plates

Stella Donnelly “Tricks”

Stella Donnelly is particularly good at writing lyrics that sketch out a mundane situation with an underlying tension that speaks to something much darker. In some cases, as with her song “Boys Will Be Boys,” it’s unmistakably bleak. But with “Tricks,” a song about dealing with random dull men who’ve belittled her as she attempts to perform for them, the darkness is very low key and insidious. Donnelly’s voice is bright and assertive, but her guitar is a loose, casual groove – she sounds annoyed but her tone is mostly just dismissive. It’s less “fuck you” and more of an exaggerated eye roll. It’s a day-in-the-life song that gently nudges the listener to wonder why this sort of low-grade bullshit must be a default condition.

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