Track: Old Photographs (2006)
Country succeeds like no other music in evoking the ups and downs of family strife and bittersweet loss. On a bed of honky-tonk guitar and banjo, Todd rifles through his family album, announces "Here come the evil thoughts/From evil men/You thought had gone", and with a flash we are back in 1969, wistfully keening for days of fathers, cloudless skies, lawns and frozen smiles.
Todd is a Brit, now transplanted in Japan. Perhaps that's why, even amid its alt-country surroundings, Old Photographs recalls British kitchen-sink TV dramas of the early 1960s. Redolent, earthy and wistful, Todd delivers a charming paean to a time that's dead and gone.
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