Don't Die In The Bundu

Album review

After three albums of distinctly ruminative, atmospheric indie singer/songwriter folk, Wren Hinds came to the attention of the Bella Union label, which reissued his entire back catalog before releasing this, his fourth solo full-length. Recorded in a mountainside cabin on the Cape Peninsula in Hinds' native South Africa, Don’t Die in the Bundu is perhaps his most personal album yet, with songs inspired by experiences as harrowing as being held at gunpoint and as life-affirming as first-time fatherhood. Tied together by themes of nature and survival, the album opens with tuneful standout "A Song," a particularly soft-spoken, bittersweet outing whose folkstyle guitar and occasional repositioning squeaks are accompanied only by a late-song electric guitar marking chord changes. Meanwhile, double-tracked vocals offer gems like “Come to me like a song/Kick down the back door and don’t stay too long." A track like "Dream State" is another existential one, this time with more typical arrangements consisting of textured layers of humming electronics, reverb-heavy guitar, acoustic guitar and banjo strums, and, in this case, distant, knocking sounds serving as percussion ("In the dream state/Not a bad place to fade away"). More-world-weary selections include "Restless Child," a song full of atmospheric sustain and admonitory lyrics directed at his then-unborn child. It was partly informed by events like the COVID-19 pandemic and riots taking place in his hometown. Elsewhere, "Father" offers a breezier take on parenthood, while "The Garden" plays out like a supernatural campfire tale punctuated by spacy electronics and instruments including the shakuhachi (a traditionally bamboo flute built on a pentatonic scale) and swarmandal (an Indian box zither), both of which were performed here by Guy Buttery. While, as the title suggests, Don’t Die in the Bundu's overriding tone is a cautionary one, Hinds offers plenty of dreamy distraction and crafted comfort along the way on an album that, with attentive listening, can be subtly stunning.
© Marcy Donelson /TiVo