Polly Paulusma (c) Lina Jusevičiūtė 2024
Polly Paulusma
Releases New Single ‘Mary Louise’
Listen Here / Watch The Video Here
+ Announces Extensive Spring 2025 UK Tour
New Album ‘Wildfires’ Is Out February 28th
(via One Little Independent Records & Wild Sound)
Pre-Order The Album Here
“Outstanding” – The Telegraph
“Complete, pure and personal” – MOJO
“Enchanting understated, intelligent folk pop” – Rolling Stone
Acclaimed English singer-songwriter Polly Paulusma releases a new single ‘Mary Louise’ today (8th January), via One Little Independent Records and Wild Sound, as well as announcing an extensive UK tour for spring 2025.
Taken from her forthcoming new album ‘Wildfires’, ‘Mary Louise’ is a song about the love for a girl gone too soon. Part of this song came from a dream that Polly wrote in her morning pages (daily stream-of-consciousness handwritten free writing as advocated by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way).
Polly tells us; “The song arrived when I was writing about my love for my children, how I always wanted to be there to catch them if they should fall. I was immediately catapulted into a terrible memory from school of Mary Louise who fell to her death from a high window. I was in my final year, 17 years old, and she must have been 15 or 16, a long way from home. I had had no idea that this memory had been bubbling away in my subconscious mind so close to the surface. The melody came very fast to me, as if she passed it to me herself.”
‘Wildfires’, Polly’s sixth studio album, will be released on February 28th 2025. 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.
Polly Paulusma bares all amidst a collection of textured acoustic guitars and rich, layered melodic flourishes. ‘Wildfires’ is mellow and cosy 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 new 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.
In an age of fatigue and dwindling attention spans, as well as targeted short-form content pushed over social media channels, Paulusma is asking us to slow down. ‘Wildfires’ 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. Like all good things, the reward here is in the commitment.
Paulusma’s live performance with bassist Jon Thorne (Lamb, Yorkston/Thorne/Khan, James Yorkston) will recreate this feel on a newly announced spring 2025 UK tour, with Jon’s haunting and plaintive compositions accompanying spoken word sections as well as his kinetic playing on the songs. His creative collaborative input was instrumental in the project developing as it did.
Full list of new UK tour dates is;
28 February Deal Astor Theatre
1 March Grayshott Folk Club
3 March Stroud Prince Albert
5 March Birmingham Kitchen Garden Cafe
6 March Cambridge Portland Arms
7 March Luton Bear Club
8 March Newport Le Pub
9 March Clarbeston, Wales – Carmel Chapel
12 March Bristol Fringe
13 March Penzance Acorn
14 March Leamington Spa Temperance
15 March Chesham Drawingroom
16 March Sheffield Cafe #9
18 March London Green Note
19 March Brighton Folklore Rooms
20 March Winchester Hyde Tavern
21 March Ryde, Isle Of Wight – Monkton Arts
22 March Cowes, Isle Of Wight – Medina Bookshop
25 March Newcastle Cumberland Arms
27 March Liverpool St Michaels
28 March Penrith, Cumbria – Lazonby Village Hall
29 March Kingsbarns, St Andrews – Cambo House
30 March Glasgow Glad Café
Tickets for all shows available via https://www.pollypaulusma.com/tour/
Polly Paulusma is also a producer and label founder – her own label Wild Sound released records from nine other artists between 2012-2016 before becoming a folk imprint at One Little Independent Records. Her academic book ‘Angela Carter and Folk Song: ‘Invisible Music’, Prose, and the Art of Canorography’ was released by Bloomsbury Academic. She was appointed Professor of Song & Literature at ICMP (Institute of Contemporary Music Performance) where she teaches on their Songwriting masters.
Paulusma has toured the world supporting Bob Dylan, Jamie Cullum, The Divine Comedy and Marianne Faithfull, as well as playing Glastonbury, T in the Park, V Festival and Cambridge Folk Festival among many others, and touring the USA and Italy. She signed to Sony/ATV in Los Angeles and opened for Coldplay at their secret show at The Troubadour in West Hollywood.
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