B-Side Guys

Norwich duo Christina Alden and Alex Patterson construct “A Hundred Years Ago” around the strange temporal distortions that occur during medical trauma. Their latest track from their new album examines how crisis can make love feel both ancient and immediate—as if profound connections existed long before the people involved ever met.

The song opens with February storm imagery that quickly shifts to hospital settings, creating jarring juxtaposition between natural and clinical environments. Alden and Patterson’s seven-year musical partnership allows them to navigate this emotional territory with shared intuition, their harmonies providing stability while the subject matter threatens to destabilize everything.

Their approach to folk music avoids both precious acoustic traditions and overly dramatic arrangements. Instead, they create space for examining how trauma leaves permanent marks while simultaneously revealing the body’s capacity for endurance. The repeated refrain about being “made to love” someone “a hundred years ago” suggests that some connections transcend ordinary chronology.

The duo’s extensive touring background—including performances with Show Of Hands and at Celtic Connections—informs their understanding of how intimate material translates to larger audiences. They present personal crisis as universal experience without losing the specificity that makes individual suffering meaningful.

“A Hundred Years Ago” succeeds because Alden and Patterson treat medical trauma as spiritual experience rather than purely physical ordeal. Their exploration of how crisis can reveal pre-existing emotional architecture creates framework for understanding love as something discovered rather than developed—a recognition that feels both destined and devastating.