Perry Keyes - The Last Ghost Train Home (2007)

Any artist can evoke a place, a time. The trick to great songwriting is to make those times and places resonate in the hearts of people who have never been there or done that, and the gift of Perry Keyes is that he achieves this brilliantly in his heartbreaking ballads and gritty rock. On The Last Ghost Train Home, Keyes confirms his status as one of Australia's - no, dammit, the world's - finest singer-songwriters with a set of gloriously observed and constructed songs. Keyes' scenes and rich gallery of characters are photograph-vivid and anointed with acutely-observed and brutally honest detail that brings them roaring to life. His images and anecdotes, some poignant, others the stuff of nightmares, loom at you like sylphs and hellions from a ghost train gloom.

Best song-writing Australian cabbie on the planet? No contest! --Billboard Critics Choice