London Still was a single from their 2003 album Up All Night, which remains to this day an unsung classic acoustic folk/blues/country album.

A lot of the songs on the Up All Night album dealt with issues of distance and homesickness, and London Still seemed to be their definitive homesick tune. The lyric “today I dream of home and not of London anymore” says it all.

Sung by Donna Simpson, the tune has a feeling of lazily living out life in the city but increasingly yearning for home. It describes tube trips over to Camden to wander around and buy records and in that way captures the romance of living in a foreign city.

The guitar work (which I’ll attribute to Josh Cunningham) is flawless and melodic, with cascading acoustic runs and resonating chords punctuating the story. Definitely a classic tune, from a band who are well worth a listen.

I’m a big fan of the Up All Night album, so I suggest you start there if you want to get to know The Waifs better. They’ve also got a new album out called ’sundirtwater’, which I can’t wait to hear.

Hurt, in particular, has the potential to break your heart. Johnny’s voice is heavy and frail throughout, and the slow pounding piano grows and becomes more insistent as the song reaches its end.

What gets me is how Cash re-interprets a song written by someone from a completely different generation (Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails).

Having seen the Walk The Line biopic and knowing a little bit about Cash’s life makes the song all the more poignant. The accompanying video is a tasteful retrospective of various milestones in his career, and the song takes on such a raw, personal quality. I have to say that I have never heard a song before or since that has had such a profound effect on me.

For me, the most touching part of the video is where Johnny is performing in the lounge of his house and you see his wife June looking down from the staircase. Her face appears careworn and anxious. Both were at the later stages of their lives and died within months of each other in 2003.

I don’t think there’s another song that I could name that has such poignance and depth. Check out the video.