Wren Hinds

An indie singer/songwriter with a thoughtful approach rooted in classic folk-rock and dreamy rumination, Wren Hinds is the livelier half of the more rustic duo Hinds Brothers. The South African launched his solo career in 2018 with Tragedy Hill, which collected songs recorded in the first half of the decade and established an acoustic palette shaded by electronics. Two yearning 2020 releases, the more downcast A Thousand Hearts and the anxious A Child's Chant for the New Millennium, led to a record deal with Bella Union, which issued his fourth solo outing, 2023's Don’t Die in the Bundu. It was inspired by both positive and negative personal experiences that accentuated his stylistic and symbolic uses of light, shadow, and space. Raised on the southeast coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa by a musician and a painter, Wren Hinds watched his father work on various recordings and overdubs as a child. Wren himself kept a tape recorder on hand to record as often as he could. Also taking inspiration from his mother, he later described his layering technique as painting with sound. Not to be confused with the project of John and Peter Hinds, he eventually formed Hinds Brothers with his brother, Aden, and they released an album, the self-produced Ocean of Milk, in mid-2013. It was a collaborative affair featuring nearly 20 guests and recorded in seven different studios across their base of Durban, Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Pretoria. A rustic affair in line with acts like the Avett Brothers and Old Crow Medicine Show, it stood in contrast to Wren Hinds' first solo effort, late 2018's Tragedy Hill. Named for a landmark in his hometown of Ramsgate, it comprised songs recorded between 2012 and 2015 of a much more intimate, restrained nature, and instrumentation including pedal steel, acoustic guitar, and spacy electronics. After relocating to Cape Town, Hinds followed up the debut with two albums delivered in relatively quick succession, March 2020's plaintive A Thousand Hearts and a pandemic album -- that September's A Child's Chant for the New Millennium -- both of which featured a similarly hushed acoustic-electric palette. Performed entirely by Hinds except for one track featuring a rhythm section, the latter album featured three songs based on poems by Keith Erasmus, including the title track. Bella Union came calling in 2022 and reissued Hinds' entire back catalog on vinyl before releasing his fourth studio album, July 2023's equally intimate Don’t Die in the Bundu. Recorded in a mountainside cabin on the Cape Peninsula, its themes of survival were inspired by experiences ranging from first-time fatherhood to being held up at gunpoint and the broader socio-political challenges of the time.
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