Polly Paulusma's Wildfires part 1
Features #9.1: Wildfires Gig & Album...
Introduction
This two parter centres around a new album project undertaken by Polly Paulusma and, as usual, the musical places I travel in response. This first part - Gig & Album – is about the album launch gig I attended last Sunday at a small studio venue near my home in Pembrokeshire, and the album itself. The second part - Book & Visual Album - will look at the beautiful book that accompanies the project, and feature two-part visual album being released in April.
You can find the album and book at Bandcamp: https://pollypaulusma.bandcamp.com/merch and check out Polly’s tour dates throughout March at: https://www.pollypaulusma.com/tour/
Wildfires 1: Gig & Album
Gig
A dark, starry Sunday night when the moon had a halo, was a perfect setting for a night with Polly Paulusma’s new album, a 2 hour, 38 track epic called Wildfires. The album, released in late February, is currently being toured by singer songwriter, Polly and bassist Jon Thorne.
This one was special. On most of their tour Polly and Jon are combining a set comprising one half of Wildfires, plus a selection of songs from her previous albums. A traditional album tour, I guess. Most bands do this. However, on this date, March 9th 2025, was chalked in as the album launch, taking place in the studio where the record was recorded last November. Instead of doing a mix of songs and eras, this gig – and only this gig – showcased Polly and Jon playing the new album in full, in two parts, as it appears on the CD. The first part: Sparks; the second, Embers. On all the other nights, they got either Sparks, or Embers, so we were very privileged!
StudiOwz is a tiny old chapel, down a narrow country lane in one of the least inhabited parts of Pembrokeshire. As a gig venue there are no frills.1 A rug on the floor. A sheet pegged up as a backdrop for the projected film visuals. Around 30 or so in the audience. One toilet and plastic chairs squeezed in everywhere in the tiny auditorium. The gig lasted three hours or so and, like similar venues (of which there are many – former places of worship scattered over the Welsh countryside) it was a chilly one! The temperature might have dropped through the evening, but the music and Jon and Polly’s performance was spectacular and heartwarming.
They started with a short prelude to the evening with a new number, Sweet Surrender, by Jodie Marie, a Pembrokeshire local and accomplished singer songwriter in her own right (having worked with, among other people, Bernard Butler – any Suede connection is bound to impress me!). Jodie lives next door and works from the studio with her partner, Owain.
Second in, Polly, Jon and Jodie played a track from Polly’s previous album, The Pivot On Which The World Turns, called Brambles and Briars, with Jody on shared vocals (on the album, the track is a duet written and performed by Polly and the wonderful David Ford2). Then a 5-minute break and costume change before Jon and Polly came back to play a full Wildfires set…
Wildfires is an ambitious project conjured by a woman who has been hailed as one of the best singer-songwriters of her generation. However, Polly Paulusma is also a poet and a literary academic. On Wildfires these come together to startling effect. Each song is prefaced by a prose poem, and all these were included in the full album performance on Sunday. The spoken pieces bring a magical imagery to the song cycle. Indeed, the whole evening had a kind of ‘droney’ spell-like quality to it. The prelude words were spoken by Polly and accompanied by Jon coaxing wonderful noises from his upright double bass, together with a weaving of samples, while the songs were played by the two on guitar and bass and, on a few numbers, piano or keyboard.
For the first set, Sparks, the pair were dressed in black – for the second, Embers, in white. Sun setting. Sun rising. Through the full set, Polly’s voice was always deeply expressive, sometimes on the edge of fragility, but then rising – soaring – from a whisper to a crescendo of emotion. Jon’s bass felt breathless at times – holding the poems and songs firmly to the ground – but wildly improvisational.
Despite the simple setting, their performance was atmospheric and theatrical; music and snatches of film stitching together into some great warm seamless tapestry (or blanket, given the chilliness!).
I’d gone to the gig on my own – listening, watching, hardly speaking at all through the evening. My memory of it a couple of days later was as if it was a meditation. Great gigs are like that aren’t they, sometimes?
Standouts? From part one, Sparks: Dunstable Downs (which at the time reminded me oddly of the Suede album, The Blue Hour, with its own spoken word extracts thrown into stark landscapes), Over and Over, Eyes On The Road and the heartrending sunset yearning of Scars. From part two, Embers: You Are Everything with its sparse electronic accompaniment, What You Waiting For and the wonderful final number, Tiny Little Things, that’s become my favourite song oof the moment, and a bit of a manifesto for me. Honestly, though, it feels churlish to pick out individual songs from what felt like a coherent, brilliant whole!
A wonderful, memorable evening with two incredibly talented musicians right at the top of their game…
Album
Gigs are always special. There is nothing like live music, and my night at StudiOwz was memorable and magical. Sometime, though, I come home from a gig with the live experience crackling through my body, but the music doesn’t always stick later when I play it at home. Favourite bands and artists play favourite songs live, and newly discovered acts can impress with their energy and musicianship… and then I move on. That’s really what happens a lot with Ziggy’s Lament and the rabbit holes I explore with bands and artists I discover and follow!
So here’s the thing. This time, it was different. The experience of listening to this album was equal to, or even surpassed, the experience of seeing it played live!
The first thing to say is that Wildfires – this 19 song, 38 track, 2 hour, triple vinyl, double CD plus book and tour and a two-part visual album to be launched in April – is entirely magnificent. If it was simply a double album of songs, it would stand as one of the best pieces of work I’ve heard. And each the two halves would have a claim to be a record of the year contender on their own!
As it is, Wildfires is a work of love and genius…
There is not a filler prelude or song. It’s definitely one to ideally hear in one sitting (or two as it is conveniently split into Sparks and Embers, as noted above!). Personally, having got it home, I listened to it twice through in a morning - poems and songs included – and another twice in the few days since.
I think I first came across the album and gig on an online advert, and got interested partly because the album launch gig was half an hour away, and partly because I listened to and loved the singles released from the record. That’s not unusual. Quite often I’ll hear two or three really good songs from a record and buy it on the strength of that. Often, though, the singles are the best songs and the ones I tend to return to, but in this case there is not a bad song on the whole album.
It could be one of the best things I’ve ever heard on LP or CD, which is saying something – particularly in a twelve month period when I’ve had ears and eye out for the best music I can find!
It’s not just the songs - which are brilliantly written and played throughout – but the way the album is constructed, crafted and produced (by Ethan Johns, who has worked with artists like Ray Lamontagne, Laura Marling and Ryan Adams). It’s like a good book, I guess, which might not be surprising given Polly Paulusma’s literature background.
Part 1, Sparks starts with the wonderful scene-setting Paper Cathedral which is about burning it all down before it begins (whatever it is, most probably love), and ends with the bittersweet Scars, a beautiful dreaming of the sun going down on love unrequited and yearned for. In between are eight more gorgeous meditations on love and death and everything in between…
And then, when you think it couldn’t get better, the second part, Embers begins with the sun rising again with the dreamy Last Night I Had A Dream. More brilliant tracks, like book chapters that keep you wanting more, and then the triumphant homage to everyday, ordinary life, Tiny Little Things, which is just a stunning song, and a perfect way to finish. Is there such a thing as a perfect record, or even a perfect song? Probably not, but Wildfires and Tiny Little Things come as close to it as almost anything I’ve heard.
As I say, listening to this album almost surpasses the experience of hearing it live, the poetry and music combining in such a natural way, that I wish this kind of joyous melding could happen more often. Though for this to happen requires writing, songwriting and musicianship of the very highest calibre, which is what we hear on Wildfires.
And finally…
The gig was in a small chapel out in the wild lands. It’s a memory I can pack away and visit again from time to time. The album is something else, I have my CD copy of the album and the book, and I can revisit them whenever I want and need to.
In the second part of this post I intend to delve further into Wildfires and the project as a whole. In Wildfires, part 2: book and visual album, I’m first going to explore the beautiful hardback book that Polly has published alongside the record. It’s a gorgeous thing in itself with essays, poetry and lyrics. it complements the music completely and provides context and background for the album. I’ll also track the launch of the two parts of the Wildfires visual album, which are being released online on the 12th and 13th April. And as usual, I will also follow up on some of the tunnels and connections that open over the next few weeks…
Notes and bonus
Note on StudiOwz: “The UK doesn’t have the regional musical diversity of the USA, but go west to Pembrokeshire where the land ends and there’s nothing but sea until you get to America, and there’s a studio in an old chapel that’s the nearest thing we have to the legendary Muscle Shoals. The studio is near nowhere, set in dramatic coastal countryside that, a long way from London, helps shape the music made there.” (From Jodie Marie’s website: https://www.jodiemarie.co.uk/about
Bonus: Brambles and Briars - Pivot is Polly’s fifth album and has guest appearances from David Ford and Kathryn Williams, both UK alt-folk legends. David Ford, in particular is one of my favourite songwriters and his early albums, in particular, are both excellent and underrated. If you want to follow a rabbit hole, then this year is the 20th anniversary of the release of his astonishing album, I Sincerely Apologise for All the Trouble I've Caused. Mary and I saw him in a dive of a pub in Leicester once; just him, loop pedals, guitar and keyboard, coming up with sample magic way before it was trendy. A catch-up and article on David Ford is probably well overdue on Ziggy’s Lament methinks…