I’m late to give this album a listen, given it was released in November 2025, and doubly given how much I loved Belladonna’s two magnificent EPs, ‘Salty Dog’ from 2020 and ‘Total Eclipse of my Brain’ from 2022. Having said that, the latest video from the album was only released six weeks ago… so maybe I’m not too late?
‘Arcus Way’ is Belladonna’s debut album, and a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since her last release. There is a massive shift in sound here. It is certainly more melancholy, and much more acoustic. Gone are the overt poppy hooks and down are the BPMs. In fact, drums are often dispensed with altogether.
If the change has not been a part of aging and maturing, the trauma of having lost all her possessions, musical or otherwise, in a house fire earlier in 2025 will undoubtedly have had a massive impact.
Certainly, the effect of this event comes through in her lyrics.
In ‘Flightpath’, my current favourite, she sings: “Dodged another bullet, cos I ‘scaped another fire at my house”. And later, in ‘Driving Home for Christmas’: “We used to sit in my room and listen to the walls, but my house went up in flames”. Autobiographic, my heart bleeds for Bella, who takes us through the temporary return to the arms of a former lover, to give her some stability and comfort in the immediate aftermath of the event on the latter song.
On first listen, you might be forgiven in thinking this is going to be a lo-fi album. On ‘Arcus Way’, the opening track, there is audible tape hiss at the start. Even the associated artwork is decidedly lo-fi, with its black-and-white photograph and the album name doodled with a blue ballpoint pen. Overall, however, while it remains rather minimalist and understated relative to the former EPS, the lushness of the arrangements remains.
‘Belladonna’, the plant’, is commonly known in New Zealand as “deadly nightshade”, but there is nothing toxic in her music. This album is mellow gold, and not for the first time with Belladonna does Bandcamp stop my ability to keep listening to it over and over with the dreaded note that “The time has come to open thy heart/wallet”.
