11. The Everly BrothersSongs Our Daddy Taught Us

Looking at this list it’s clear how most of my influences are Southern. This is a very Southern album, and if I could choose one album to define what Southern gothic literature would sound like, this is a Southern gothic album to the T. It is incredibly dark! ‘Down In The Willow Garden’ is one of the most disturbing songs. A lot of the songs have this quiet melancholy, and a lot of the songs have this off-putting simplicity and this homely folksiness, while they’re also dealing with really disturbing topics. I just think it’s a really complicated album, and it’s probably viewed by a lot of people as – Songs Our Daddy Taught Us – this very kind of cute, novelty-type thing. I don’t see it that way, and I see it as being just as vital as anything Bob Dylan ever did. And that’s not an insult to Bob Dylan – if anything, it’s a compliment to Bob Dylan that I would mention him in the same sentence. And you could use a word that I don’t use very often to describe it: stark.