Wildfires (2025) by Polly Paulusma

Review - MOJO

★★★★ English folk singer's wildly ambitious triple concept LP

Asking listeners to join you on a two-hour, 19-track listen over six sides of vinyl is a hell of a thing, but Cambridge-based singer-songwriter Polly Paulusma hopes you will.

With each track also prefaced by an accompanying poem or spoken explanation - recorded in churches, caves, quarries and elsewhere with all the attendant ambient sound - Wildfires is quite the journey.

Guided in full collaboration with producer Ethan Johns, Paulusma's songs reflect on love, for those we share entire lives with, brief liaisons, people we lose or even long departed artists we can still connect with through their music. Double bass, piano and drums accompany the ride as it undulates through the singer's emotional exploration, and even at such length it's easy to sit right alongside her. Wildfires is a marvel of subtly nuanced longform art in a world perma-geared towards instant gratification.

Andy Fyfe

Review - FATEA - https://www.fatea-records.co.uk/magazine/reviews/PollyPaulusma3

Having had the privilege of hearing some of these songs in development on her tour with Kathryn Williams in Autumn 2023, this is an album I've been looking forward to hearing. Following its progress of writing and recording on her social media, including writing sessions in caves has been fascinating.

The album is divided into 2 parts, 'Sparks' and 'Embers' and 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."

Each song is preceded by a prologue, spoken word passages and found sounds recorded on location in churches, down quarries, in caves, by riversides, and against sacred standing stones. One of the songs played in 2023 leads the album. 'Paper Cathedral' was good then but has turned into a richly layered tune with producer Ethan Johns on drums, Jon Thorne on bass and Neil Cowley's piano complementing Paulusma's guitar and voice.

Separating out the individual songs is quite hard as she clearly intends it to be heard as a whole. She says it is "a callback, 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."

But some songs do stand out. 'Paper Cathedral', which was the lead single, 'Mary Louise', which is about the love for a girl gone too soon, and 'Over and Over', looking at how the recorded voice can continue to love long after the singer has departed are both songs that step out of the theme. 'Over and Over's spiky electric guitar and wind sounds especially add an edginess to the subject matter.

A highlight of the Sparks section is 'Cabin In The Woods,' Paulusma's delivery is soft and sits right up close to your ear, as though you were in fact in a small dark cabin. The prologue to that song is the longest of the spoken word pieces with overlapping sounds, music and words. Taking the songs and prologues as single pieces of work (as you certainly should), this is an absolute masterpiece.

The Embers section is if anything more unified. That's not to say the songs are any less. 'Last Night I had a Dream' for instance is as delightful a tune as you could ask for. And 'Throw Me To The Dogs' is a powerful song with moving words which totally undermine the delicate jazzy tune. It's more that it this part of the whole really does need to be heard as a single work.

If there are comparisons to be made it is with Joni Mitchell around the time of Hejira or Don Juan's Reckless Daughter. The atmosphere and the way the music draws you into itself and onto the next part of the story. The interconnected narrative of the songs and prologues is however something quite unique and wonderful.

My advice is don't try and pick out songs to "sample" the album on the dreaded Spotify, you won't feel the benefit but may as I did on first listening find you start at the beginning and all of a sudden 2 hours have passed, and you are at the end of a quite extraordinary listening experience. As Paulusma says "It is a long body of work, far longer than I expected, coming in at 19 songs. 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." She is full of praise for producer Ethan Johns, who believed in her vision and didn't trim the song count. "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."

This is a career defining piece of work. Polly Paulsma has turned in some fine albums notably 2022's 'The Pivot On Which The World Turns,' but this is something altogether different. She describes it as "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 can't see 2025 producing anything even close to this for sheer quality of songwriting, thoughtfulness and intensity of performance. I think album of the year may already be decided.

Tim Martin

Paulusma released debut 'Scissors In My Pocket' on One Little Independent to critical acclaim in 2004, supporting Bob Dylan and Coldplay.

She released 4 more albums and 4 sister-albums, a film soundtrack, and founded label Wild Sound. Her PhD on Angela Carter's folk-singing informed 4th album 'Invisible Music'.

Her 6th album 'Wildfires', produced by Ethan Johns was released in February 2025.

pollypaulusma.com
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