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Sara Tindley presents Wild And Unknown, an astonishingly frank and fearless new album produced by Nick DiDia (Bruce Springsteen, Powderfinger, Pearl Jam). Sparkling with the resilience and artistry we’ve come to expect from a songwriter of Tindley’s calibre, Wild and Unknown sings away the bruises of her recent brush with mortality.

Written in a beach shack at Iluka on NSW’s north coast, the songs capture the healing virtues of sand, sunlight and sea.  You can hear the cane shimmering in the summer heat, feel wonder and joy through the voice of a grateful survivor.

From the gasp of undiluted elation in the opening title track – “I feel like I’ve landed on the moon”, to the deep roots vibe of Lowlands, where she shrugs off her recent affliction; “singin hard times no more, got the devil in his hole”.

Summoning Tom Waits in her defiance of Jack the Dancer – ‘ready or not here I am’ to the gorgeous ballad ‘Cities’, which comes off like a lost Joni Mitchell masterpiece, there’s a luminous quality to these songs that’s only granted to someone who’s glimpsed the lands beyond the veil – and lived to tell the tale.

Tindley is touring the album as it was recorded, a duo with Michael Turner, a veteran artist who knows plenty about turning emotion and experience into music. Their collaboration with Nick DiDia transformed Sara’s countrified ballads into paeans infused with light and space, reminiscent of The Triffids’ limpid invocation of Australian landscapes.

With her daughter Lily chiming harmonies, it’s an album rooted in family, in the simple pleasures of an unadorned life, in the joy of song and sunlight.