Wren Hinds explores what matters most to him in his layered new album, Don’t Die In The Bundus. And in doing so he touches on what matters most to the rest of us too. It’s a testimony to quiet resilience, wrapped in poetry and the sort of acoustics you can sink right into.
The title was inspired by an old survival guide, chosen from a list of possible names after Hinds was held up at gunpoint in Cape Town. But the album really serves as an emotional guidebook – a subtle consideration on how best to live a life.
Fortitude and fatherhood play central roles in his particular body of work, and as a result the whole thing is dusted in a light sheen of hope. Hope for the future, hope for ourselves. Opener “Our Song” leans into just that with José González-esque folk dexterity. “Wild Eyes” is bookended by extended instrumentals and navigates what it is to pick yourself up time and time again.
Hinds drenches some corners in melancholy (within the echoing mistiness of “A Wasted Love” and the goosebump-inducing chorus of “Chasing a River”), and douses the latter half of the album in an unequivocal dreaminess which seeps from “Dream State” and spills across the lilting poetry of “Gilded by the Sun, Silvered by the Moon” and “The Garden”.
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He delivers hope within the delicate robustness of Don’t Die In The Bundus, bolstered by gorgeously produced acoustics and a prevailing authenticity which leads from the front.
Feature pic supplied by artist
