Reviews

A Different Thread
Album: Over Again
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 11
Website: https://www.adifferentthread.com/

Now, visa issues resolved, Robert Jackson and Alicia Best are firmly established in rural North Carolina, this, their first album, built around songs written when borders kept them apart while also documenting personal loss and struggles with drinking. Joined by Mike Seal and Luke Cawthra on bass, Alan Best on mandolin, pianist Ed Witkin and Jennifer Curtis on violin and cello with Amma La Mare and Shannon D. O'Connor providing backing vocals alongside Farefeld's Chris Elliott and Caitlin Jones, the latter also providing flute, let me say from the start that it's not only their best work yet but one of the year's finest, reflected in the duo's burgeoning profile on the back of seemingly constant touring.

It opens with the jaunty gentle stomp, fiddle-solo shaded folksy title track, a begin again mission statement written after a total solar eclipse and the loss of Alicia's grandmother, the pair trading lines as they sing "look how far we have come/From the place where we begun… Come on and share in our pain/One road is ending/Another road begins" as it heads to a handclaps revivalist meeting close .

Heralded by drums and resonator guitar (and subsequent solo), the irresistibly catchy, paradoxically titled 'Sorrow Brings Me Joy' was one of my favourite singles of 2025, described as a "tongue-in-cheek survival song about learning to laugh when life goes sideways" that embraces the mess, rolls with the punches and looks on the bright side ("Woke up on the wrong side/At least I?m not dead") with the wry wisdom that "the devil can?t come knockin?/If we don?t have a door".

Drawing on her Southern upbringing ("I was born into the sickness/And the dangers of this land/I?m no stranger to the music of/The blood washed band"), Alicia takes the spotlight on the five-minute 'The Prophet', a Southern Gothic number that conjures the very best of Hannah Aldridge as it turns the knife on those who abuse religion and power, bringing others harm while proclaiming righteousness, serving up a critique of late stage capitalism ("The horsemen on the horizon/Wear a suit and tie") and a call for environmental stewardship ("it?s not me that needs your saving/It?s this earth we?re living on/Doesn?t matter who your god is/After all of us are gone") as she proclaims "I won?t sing your hallelujah/I won?t wear your robe and crown… ever since I knew ya/You let me down/And your profits burn it to the ground". If she never wrote another song, this alone would ensure her legacy.

Taking a bluesy groove and tribal drum rhythm, Neil Young's The Needle and the Damage Done perhaps a touchstone, Robert sings lead on 'Sweet And The Burn', another drawing on his alcohol addiction ("If the liquor doesn't do me in/It will hold me like an old friend/Dancing with me all night/And tell me that it's all right/And I'm still begging for another turn"), a character story following someone caught between craving and clarity, desire and self-preservation and the need to break the cycle.

A lazy old school jug band loping feel with whistling and harmonica, 'Always Leaving' is a rear view mirror number about restlessness ("I miss you before we even meet/I'm always leaving/Just to say goodbye") as a way to avoid being burned ("leave them wanting more at least I know I'll never be the one who's left alone when the day is done") complete with a call and response mid-section.

Alicia takes lead again on 'Come Home Molly', another jaunty but emotionally aching folksy jog character song, here about a friendship that's faded into silence with the distance between ("We used to write letters/Whatever happened to letter writing/I used to know intimate details/Of your every day…we used to just talk until there was/Nothing left to say …you used to just take the time to hold me tight/We used to have silences/But Molly, not like this") but extends an open invitation to reconcile.

A similar theme informs Robert's slow-paced swayer 'Goodbye Muddy Waters' which is titled for the Mississippi not the bluesman and, pivoting between grief and hope, speaks of lost love and the need to move on from the ghosts ("I love you but I know I can't stay/Give me sweet surrender and I'll be on my way/It's a long way to Carolina from here").

Introduced by mournful cello, another social issues number from Alicia, 'Columbine' is, as you might surmise about America's propensity for school shootings, the title referring to both the 1999 Colorado tragedy and the flower that becomes a memorial marker ("The children?s shoes and teddy bears /The candles and the alters") to the emptiness left behind ("The yellow bedroom off the hall/Empty locker, lock of hair You strain to hear the sound of/Little footsteps on the stairs"). With a sorrowful strings break, the song's narrator asks "how do we live like this/With all this blood?", sounding the ominous chorus note that "the columbine is growing again".

From one plant to another, the steady walking, harmonica-laced 'Amaranth' again spotlights Alicia (who is lead on this and the remaining tracks) with Robert on harmonies with another song that's speaks to admitting things are not okay and starting healing through self-love, the ability of the red flower (sometimes known, as the lyrics reference, as love lies bleeding) to grow even when the soil conditions are against it a pretty clear metaphor for resilience ("You keep growing through the cracks/You grow through all of these broken things ….I buried myself under the snow/I used to think spring could save me/The thing is, what I know now/Is only I can do the saving").

A similar sense of lacking a compass in life, the slow strummed, steady rhythm 'Deep Water Fish' is, the fish navigating the dark depths with its own glow as it seeks to find a path forward, also rooted in metaphor about having the self-belief in letting your light shine in your own Mariana trench ("you say I'm a beacon, it's just hard to believe it/When I feel like one of those angler fish/I'm afraid when I shine/It's just a trick of the light/I'm no more than a spark") and the comfort in knowing "you don't have to shine all of the time/It's exhausting but you're not alone/Sometimes lightning's all you need to guide you home".

Working a Velvets bass line and an early Cowboy Junkies fee with Jones colouring an open horizon with her flute, the album if not the journey comes to a close in 'Leon', the title referencing Alica's dream of the city in Nicaragua , returning to that restless feeling about a siren call from out there and knowing that even if you don't tale the road itself, the memories of where you've been or places seen on maps can allow you to take a mental voyage. Surely poised for that long-deserved international breakthrough, with its songs of renewal, transition, healing and hope like the title you'll want to listen over again.

Mike Davies

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