Polly Paulusma has long been celebrated for her poetic lyricism and delicate yet powerful folk compositions. With Wildfires, she delivers her most ambitious work yet—an album that unfolds with patience, depth, and an unwavering commitment to storytelling. Some albums demand your attention. Others slowly pull you under, revealing their depths with each listen. Wildfires does both. It’s bold, sprawling, and utterly unlike most things out right now—an album that challenges and rewards in equal measure.
Across its nearly two-hour runtime, Wildfires shifts between the raw and the ethereal, the grand and the intimate. It moves with a cinematic scope, yet at its core, it lingers on something deeply human: love, not in its loudest declarations, but in the quiet, everyday moments. Nick Cave once wrote that love is found in “the small things—scraping the ice off the windscreen in the morning, making a cup of tea, holding a hand when the person reaches out.” This album carries that same understanding, exploring tenderness, longing, and devotion through its shifting tones and textures.
There’s an intentionality to the way Wildfires unfolds, urging audiences to slow down and take in its intricate layers. In an age where instant gratification reigns, where algorithms shape our attention spans and reward quick consumption, Paulusma resists the pressure to condense her artistry into easily digestible portions. Instead, she presents an immersive body of work, designed to be experienced in full, where the interconnected stories of love in all its forms are given the space to breathe.
This critique of modern attention spans isn’t new—Arcade Fire’s Everything Now tackled the same issue, exploring our collective inability to sit with art, emotions, or even ourselves without seeking the next distraction. But while Everything Now delivered its message through irony and overstimulation, Wildfires offers an antidote. It doesn’t mock the listener for their impatience—it simply asks them to step out of the cycle for a moment, to engage in something deeper, something lasting. It’s also a reminder that, in a world overflowing with content, we can’t possibly consume everything, nor should we try. There’s value in being selective, in taking our time, in truly immersing ourselves in art rather than letting it wash over us in passing. This review itself has been shaped by early morning listens in front of the fire on a cold winter’s morning, allowing the album’s warmth to unfold in its own time.
Instrumentally, Wildfires is rich in texture yet deeply organic. Delicate acoustic guitars weave through spoken-word poetry, underpinned by the ambient sounds of rivers, caves, and natural landscapes. Producer Ethan Johns, known for his work with Laura Marling and Ray LaMontagne, brings a raw immediacy to the record, capturing live performances that feel intimate and unvarnished. Paulusma’s voice, at times hushed and introspective, at others soaring with emotion, is the thread that ties it all together.
Lyrically, Wildfires resists easy interpretation. It deals in impressions, evoking emotions rather than spelling them out. A sense of searching runs through the album, a pull between distance and connection, longing and acceptance. There’s melancholy here, but also warmth—an acknowledgment of life’s fractures without ever succumbing to them. As Paulusma herself has said, “These are songs I probably could not have written 20 years ago. I just didn’t have enough miles on the clock.” The weight of experience is embedded in every note, every lyric.
Divided into two parts—Sparks and Embers—the album navigates different forms of love: the innocent love of childhood, the reckless passion of youth, the grief of love lost, and the quiet endurance of long-term devotion. Standout tracks like Paper Cathedral, Over and Over, and Tiny Little Things reflect these themes in strikingly different ways, yet all feel like essential pieces of the larger narrative.
The ambition of Wildfires is undeniable, but it never feels indulgent. It works as a deep listening experience—something best taken in as a whole, like putting on a film. It’s a journey, one that doesn’t just ask to be heard, but felt.
You can pre order this sublime piece of work here.
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