Have you ever been to a listening party?
My parents would tell me of them – nostalgic, recalling a yester-age when, on a long-awaited album’s release, friends would gather around a turntable with a freshly pressed LP, and sit together in reverent anticipation, waiting for that first scratch and hum of the gently dropped needle. It was almost ritualistic: a collective act of musical revelation.
Kimberley-based singer-songwriter Paul Woolner recently invited me to my first such experience. When I arrive, his home is candlelit, a warm glow flickering off familiar faces. Everyone settles in, ready to hear Memory Like Water for the very first time.
“There’s a wonderful communal element to this way of connecting around a new piece of art,” Paul tells me as people find their seats. “After almost a year’s process, I wanted to create an experience where all the elements, subtleties, and care that went into this record could finally be shared.”
Memory Like Water may have taken a year to make, but it plumbs the depths of a lifetime. It’s the culmination of decades of songwriting, countless hours spent honing craft, and a life lived in search of fleeting moments where body, mind, and the natural world all feel seamlessly in tune.
It’s a poetic foundation for such an intimate record. Woolner has been writing and performing since he was fifteen; he fronted bands and toured in his twenties before stepping back from music when marriage and family shifted his priorities. But the songwriting spark never left. Over the past quarter century, he’s been periodically returning to it – penning lyrics, refining, recording, all slowly building toward this new chapter.
“This record is everything I’ve been preparing for,” he says. “It surprised me, honestly. I didn’t expect it to lead to a management company, a label, a whole new direction. I just kept doing the work.”
For him, finishing a song is about persistence, focus, and surrounding himself with people whose instincts challenge him to dig deeper. That commitment sharpened when producer Thomas MacKay joined the project; his ear, experience, and collaborative intuition helped reveal the heart of the songs with new insight and clarity.
You can hear that polish on the album’s first single, Moving On, a reflective ballad where slow, muted horns and dreamy keys drift behind the wisdom of Woolner’s guitarwork and sensitive, intentional vocals.
When I ask Paul about the title Memory Like Water, he becomes contemplative, and begins to speak of the places that shaped him.
“On a quiet, gently rainy day on an empty Maui surf break, a sperm whale cruised near me for half an hour and then fully breached just a hundred meters from my board… Waking to a surprise swell on Lake Huron, the whole beach warming in the early light as I caught wave after wave in crystal-clear water… Skiing into the forested slopes of the Escarpment where the blustery winds fall away and untracked powder in myriad shades of white and blue waits to be shared with friends…”
He pauses for a thoughtful moment before finishing.
“I realized those experiences are like how memories move around us—always flowing. And what stays with me are the moments of pure, simple, deep-time joy that nature gives us, and how we meet it.”
After an evening amongst friends, quietly, dedicatedly listening to this small trove of songs, it’s clear from the feeling in the room that what Paul is meaning to convey has resonated. “In this disordered world if my music evokes calm, warmth, beauty, resilience… I couldn’t ask for more,” he says. “We are all seeking to find our place in life.”
With Memory Like Water, Paul Woolner feels like a man – a musician, an artist – who has finally found exactly where he fits in this world, and has chosen to share that place with the rest of us.
Stream Memory Like Water wherever you listen to music. Video for Moving On now viewable on YouTube.
Written by Joel Loughead
Photos by Joel Loughead and Frances Beatty
