Consumer Guide Album

Stella Donnelly: Flood [Secretly Canadian, 2022]
Beware of the Dogs was what it said it was: the sweet-voiced, sharp-tongued rundown on a kennel's worth of pricks and creeps so catchy it could have fueled a songwriting seminar. Here Donnelly is sparer and vaguer, giving off the never fully defined feeling that she tried to make a go of it with a guy or two who in crucial respects passed muster--or so it seemed, until, for instance: "Levelheadedness has made for a disastrous love/I know it, you know it." Watching a movie next to a chain smoker, as she puts it, she lowers her expectations like she's dressing up for New Year's Eve. She doesn't let on when he pinches her hard underwater while kissing her sweet up top, and sometimes she feels better against her better judgment even so. But if love is what this is, it doesn't soothe her or move her, and the quiet melancholy of these songs conveys that throughout. A-