A Different Thread display a cutting edge that belies their blunt and breezy approach to a revivalist ethos.

AN UNSELF-CONSCIOUS CELEBRATION

If cutting edge is deemed as good, what is the way to promote the blunter side, without losing any of that goodness? For Alicia Best and Robert Jackson, aka A Different Thread, such a concept is mandatory, such is their application to older styles and contexts. Which is to say there isn’t a thought or note new under the sun for this unself-conscious celebration of a different age. And it’s blimmin’ marvellous.

I was surprised to learn that Jackson is a native of Lichfield, my current home town, Staffordshire’s cosy cathedral city, a compact and classy destination. Best, by contrast, hails from Durham, and not the one over here, the one in North Carolina. They met, as you do, each busking, in Galway, Ireland and have since forged a shared identity, this being their second full album, and with a brace of EPs ahead of that. Their music is unashamedly retro, several parts old timey, with a dash of jug band, some gospel fumes and equal parts country blues and appalachiana, buoyed along on voices, strummed guitars, fiddles, stand-up bass, rudimentary drums and harmonica.

UPBEAT & GOODTIME

Opening with the title track, the mood seems immediately upbeat and goodtime, if with a lyrical undercurrent that crosscuts any overly simple assumptions: “But if you watch it back without the laughter track, you know it ainʼt so funny“. Jackson’s is the first voice heard, a dusty bolt of an instrument, rattling about the back of a flatbed truck, whereas Best has a higher and purer tone, the timbre of a ripe apple. Together they are the classic country connect of grit and grace.

The backing is based on exuberantly picked bouncy guitar, dancing fiddle and a reassuring 4:4 thump on what sounds a single drum, with bass offering a stringy backbone. Jackson is the guitarist, Best on the drums, with Jennifer Curtis on fiddle and Mike Seal on bass. As the song progresses, so handclaps and backing vocals peal in, to give some down home front porch shading to the song, which is celebrating the back of visa separation, loss, depression and addiction. (Eek!)

Sorrow Brings Me Joy is a more muscular gospel blues, Jackson adding bottleneck electric to the mix, over the duo’s harmony vocals, with harmonica hollering in the distance. They say it’s tongue in cheek, and it may be, but they sound joyous enough. The Prophet is headier stuff, a song that effortlessly channels the kindred spirits of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Best takes the lead over guitar, piano, harmonica, fiddle and bass. A story song, shafts of trebly electric guitar populate the middle eight, sunlight through stained glass, it draws the boundary that the couple won’t cross, that of the redundancy of any belief that doesn’t encompass care.

A SWAMPY STOMP

The swampy stomp of Sweet And The Burn is a further narrative where Jackson’s guitar glistens and glimmers in the shade of a fast setting sun. Best’s kit, little more than a cymbal, a snare and her homemade suitcase kick drum, is more than enough to keep pace, as well as attention. “Walking on a knife edge, wondering why I’m not dead yet” conveys the ongoing bitter in the sweet, the sting in the burn a constant. Always Leaving is then a smoky country blues, blowing along on Jackson’s lead vocal, harmonica piano and guitar. The piano, here from Ed Witkin, rolls like a bordertown saloon and if your feet ain’t tapping, check your pulse. I love the lazy swagger that ripples through this song.

A similar vibe personifies Come Home Molly, this time with Best taking the vocal lead over the same set of musicians as the track before. By now you should really be singing along, at least the chorus, awash, as it is, with echoed bvs. Surreptitiously checking up on the duo’s touring schedule, despite them being now based in North Carolina, note has been taken that they play a set of UK dates in the autumn, including, yay, in Jackson’s home town. That anticipation heightened, Goodbye Muddy Waters has Jackson picking a languid bottleneck, a hammond purring warmly as a backdrop. A play on both Muddy Waters, the person, and any place where they might lap. I realise it may not be, but it is in my head.

SOUTHERN GOTHIC

There is an unexpected change of direction into Southern gothic for Columbine, set to enmeshed strings, fiddles and cello, from Curtis, adding a rich gloss of atmospheric noir. Best is the main correspondent here, over her partners picked guitar. Again there is a hit of Gillian Welch here, too, but I am also getting fumes suggestive of Robert Fisher’s Willard Grant Conspiracy. The surprising sheen of sophistication comes as a slight shock, but a pleasing one, and this song possibly my go-to moment, even as you slowly recognise the name and horror of the song’s progeny.

Amaranth is one of those deathly slow dirges that never fail to lift me. A paean to avoiding pretence and accepting the need to heal. Best sings the song like prophecy, a seer or maybe just a siren, the warning being there for uptake or not. Jackson’s harmonica is pure and perfect, an amalgam of all the harp you want to hear, more Springsteen Nebraska than Dylan or Shakey. Deep Water Fish could be a waltz, if a slow one. Jackson’s slide says as much as the pointed lyric: “I’m afraid when I shine It’s just a trick of the light“.

That thought seems held by the closer, Leon, where the basic band sound is filled out by dobro, organ and, delightfully, the flute of Caitlin Jones. ahead a slow fade of choral vocals as they all dream of Leon. The backing vocals and handclaps of Farefeld, aka Jones and Chris Elliott, which graced also the opening title track, make for an appropriately decorative bookend.

BRING ON THE SHOWS!

The album sounds as if it were all made at a single session, deep into the night, the players all in a circle, whereas the truth couldn’t be more different, necessity meaning it being formed from a patchwork of players, separated by both time and geography, hurdles like the mid-recording closure of one of the studios taken on the chin. All credit, therefore to the production work the two of them have given it, splicing it all together. All the songs are self-written, some jointly and others not, although it is hard to see where one pen starts and the other finishes. A splendid record. Bring on the shows!

Here’s a live version of Columbine to whet your whistle on:

A Different Thread: Website

At The Barrier: Facebook / X / Instagram