Wildfires (2025), by Polly Paulusma

Wildfires (2025)

by Polly Paulusma

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
DIGISLEEVE DOUBLE CD
Polly Paulusma's sixth studio album, produced by Ethan Johns. The album is divided into two parts on two discs, Sparks and Embers, and is a mixture of spoken word and song. It features the musical talents of Ethan Johns on drums, Neil Cowley on piano and Jon Thorne on double bass, and was recorded in a week in a chapel studio in the Welsh Preseli Hills, the music performed live and the spoken word passages recorded on location in quarries, churches, and beside sacred standing stones. An extraordinary two-hour listening experience. An accompanying book contains the prose, poetry and lyrics.

Includes unlimited streaming of Wildfires (2025) via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.

ships out within 3 days

Purchasable with gift card

£10.99 GBP or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
The triple LP vinyl of 'Wildfires'. Polly Paulusma's sixth studio album, produced by Ethan Johns. The album is divided into two parts (Sparks and Embers) across three discs, and is a mixture of spoken word and song. It features musical talents of Ethan Johns on drums, Neil Cowley on piano and Jon Thorne on double bass, and was recorded in a week in a chapel studio in the Welsh Preseli Hills, the music performed live and the spoken word passages recorded on location in quarries, churches, and beside sacred standing stones. An extraordinary two-hour listening experience of beauty and depth. An accompanying book contains the prose, poetry and lyrics.

Includes unlimited streaming of Wildfires (2025) via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.

ships out within 3 days

Purchasable with gift card

£38.99 GBP or more
Book/Magazine
This hardback book accompanies the LP and CD of Polly Paulusma's album 'Wildfires'.

With two hours of spoken word and song, there was not enough space to contain all the lyrical content in the artwork of the LP and CD. So they overflow into this beautiful book, which showcases the poems, prose passages and song lyrics in a spacious format adorned with more extraordinary photographs by the artist Lina Jusevičiūtė.

Available for pre-sale now, ships February 2025.

ships out within 3 days

Purchasable with gift card

£17.99 GBP or more

1.	Prologue to Paper Cathedral 00:54	buy track
2.	Paper Cathedral 03:48	buy track
3.	Prologue to Mary Louise 01:40	buy track
4.	Mary Louise 04:11	buy track
5.	Prologue to Red Flags 00:57	buy track
6.	Red Flags 05:08	buy track
7.	Prologue to Dunstable Downs 02:00	buy track
8.	Dunstable Downs 03:45	buy track
9.	Prologue to Over and Over 00:56	buy track
10.	Over and Over 04:44	buy track
11.	Prologue to O! My America 00:41	buy track
12.	O! My America 04:04	buy track
13.	Prologue to Eyes on the Road 01:30	buy track
14.	Eyes on the Road 05:31	buy track
15.	Prologue to Wild Swimming 01:39	buy track
16.	Wild Swimming 03:38	buy track
17.	Prologue to Cabin in the Woods 03:59	buy track
18.	Cabin in the Woods 05:28	buy track
19.	Prologue to Scars 01:27	buy track
20.	Scars 04:36	buy track
21.	Interval (14 mins) 13:56
22.	Prologue to Last Night I Had A Dream 02:05	buy track
23.	Last Night I Had A Dream 04:45	buy track
24.	Prologue to Mad Girl’s Love Song #2 02:05	buy track
25.	Mad Girl’s Love Song #2 05:19	buy track
26.	Prologue to Throw Me To The Dogs 01:00	buy track
27.	Throw Me To The Dogs 04:40	buy track
28.	Prologue to What You Waiting For 00:37	buy track
29.	What You Waiting For 03:29	buy track
30.	Prologue to Tip of my Tongue 00:47	buy track
31.	Tip of My Tongue 04:22	buy track
32.	Prologue to Long Goodbye 01:42	buy track
33.	Long Goodbye 02:38	buy track
34.	Prologue to May Day 00:41	buy track
35.	May Day 04:20	buy track
36.	Prologue to You Are Everything 00:52	buy track
37.	You Are Everything 06:04	buy track
38.	Prologue to Tiny Little Things 01:21	buy track
39.	Tiny Little Things 06:25	buy track

about

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 - 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

credits

released February 28, 2025

Polly Paulusma - vocals, guitars
Ethan Johns -- producer, drums, guitars
Neil Cowley - piano, keys
Jon Thorne - double bass

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about

Polly Paulusma Cambridge, UK

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. ... more

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