Polly Paulusma Interprets Various Kinds Of Love With Her New Album ‘Wildfires’
“Outstanding” – The Telegraph
“Complete, pure and personal” – MOJO
“Enchanting understated, intelligent folk pop” – Rolling Stone
”Wildfires”, the sixth studio album from English singer-songwriter Polly Paulusma, is out on February 28th via One Little Independent Records and Wild Sound. 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.
credit: Lina Jusevičiūtė
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.
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.
