Photo credit: Lina Jusevičiūtė
Wildfires, the sixth studio album from English singer-songwriter Polly Paulusma, is out on February 28 via One Little Independent Records and Wild Sound, ahead of a date at Winchester Hyde Tavern on Thursday 20 March 2025.
Across nearly two hours and six sides of vinyl, folk instrumentation is peppered with spoken-word poetry prologues amid sounds from caves and rivers. Its artful presentation is the hallmark of producer, Ethan Johns (Ray Lamontagne / Laura Marling / Ryan Adams), as such, it presents a step change in Paulusma’s until now largely autonomous catalogue.
Polly Paulusma bares all amidst a collection of textured acoustic guitars and rich, layered melodic flourishes. Wildfires is mellow and cozy in its production, but its honesty is bittersweet – an intimate and reflective rumination on love’s many guises, the easy parts as well as the hard. As always, Paulusma’s articulate and emotive lyrics, and her ability to convey the deepest vulnerability with vivid, sometimes nostalgic, imagery is astounding here. The LP, as filled with delicate earworms as it is with expressive poetry, burns slowly but no less fiercely, and like love, it can be gentle, it can envelope one completely, and occasionally it can be heart-wrenching.
In an age of fatigue and dwindling attention spans, as well as targeted short-form content pushed over social media channels, Paulusma is asking us to slow down. Wildfires is a call back, an ode to the concept album, intended to be listened to in a single, relaxed sitting, allowing for the interconnected stories of love in all its forms to reveal themselves. Like all good things, the reward here is in the commitment.
The length of Wildfires is a testament to the confidence that Johns had in the quality of its contents. Paulusma explains.
“It is a long body of work, far longer than I expected, coming in at 19 songs,” she says. “I won’t hear all this talk that we can’t concentrate for more than 30 seconds.
“We sit down and binge on box sets for hours, compulsively. We can handle long form.
“I tried so hard to edit the list of songs down to a more manageable size as I started working with producer Ethan Johns. But how to choose? I wanted Ethan to hear all the options so that he could pick the strongest candidates. And I had been writing. I wrote the vast majority in a sweaty fury between October 2022 and May 2023, and they have the feel to me of objects forged in fire.
“I sent him 22 songs in a jumble, like a big bag of socks, unfolded, unsorted, I didn’t know an order, but I did know this collection of songs was an emotional map of some recent painful jostling, written in my own blood as Joni would have it. They really hurt to make, but it was a good hurt, like pulling out a splinter. Writing them may have saved my life, who knows.
“I expected a song cull when I gave them all to Ethan. I thought he’d listen and trim it down to 10, 11, 12 songs. Normal album length. But he could hear my story in them, and he championed fervently the idea that we record them all. He ordered the songs to create the journey which you will hear: I remember him reading the list to me over the phone and all the hairs on my arms stood up.
“To be seen by this huge empath blew my mind. He saw and understood the journey I had undertaken. These are songs I probably could not have written 20 years ago. I just didn’t have enough miles on the clock. And it took Ethan to see what I had.”
They recorded 20 songs live in another burst of activity over five days between 18-22 November 2023 at a chapel studio in Wales, capturing performances between Polly, Jon Thorne (bass), Neil Cowley (piano) and Ethan on drums or tiple. Polly and Ethan then went out for a day into the wild Preseli Hills and recorded the spoken word passages on location in churches, down quarries, in caves, by riversides, and against sacred standing stones. Ethan feathered the audio recordings to create delirious effects recalling tape print-through. A few light overdubs were added to the songs on two sessions at his studio, and the album was complete.
Across parts 1 and 2 Wildfires (separated into Sparks and Embers) tells a story. It describes the love we feel as children, the love we give to others through music, the misdirected love we feel as teenagers, the love of lost babies, the love of the dead, and romantic love, the hot fools’ gold, the agonising passion, the madness that comes from that entirely interior mental whirlwind, those feelings that burn on the inside, and the more durable slow-burn love of longer term relationships, the love and longing for a divine presence, love from beyond the grave, love from beyond the stars.
These different forms of love are represented in standout tracks, each track is accompanied by its own individual narrative, tied together as the listener is guided through them. The album works as a deep listening experience, one best enjoyed in a continuum, like putting on a film.
Paulusma’s live performance with bassist Jon Thorne (Lamb, Yorkston/Thorne/Khan, James Yorkston) will recreate this feel, with Jon’s haunting and plaintive compositions accompanying spoken word sections as well as his kinetic playing on the songs. His creative collaborative input was instrumental in the project developing as it did.
Polly will play the following UK live shows in spring 2025 in support of new album ‘Wildfires’
28 February Deal Astor Theatre
1 March Grayshott Folk Club
3 March Stroud Prince Albert
5 March Birmingham Kitchen Garden Cafe
6 March Cambridge Portland Arms
7 March Luton Bear Club
8 March Newport Le Pub
9 March Clarbeston, Wales – Carmel Chapel
12 March Bristol Fringe
13 March Penzance Acorn
14 March Leamington Spa Temperance
15 March Chesham Drawingroom
16 March Sheffield Cafe #9
18 March London Green Note
19 March Brighton Folklore Rooms
20 March Winchester Hyde Tavern
21 March Ryde, Isle Of Wight – Monkton Arts
22 March Cowes, Isle Of Wight – Medina Bookshop
25 March Newcastle Cumberland Arms
27 March Liverpool St Michaels
28 March Penrith, Cumbria – Lazonby Village Hall
29 March Kingsbarns, St Andrews – Cambo House
30 March Glasgow Glad Café
Tickets for all shows available via www.pollypaulusma.com/tour/
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