In 2018, Danny Neill wrote a review of ‘On A Whim’, the debut album of A Different Thread, a collaboration between Robert Jackson from Lichfield, England, and Alicia Best from Durham, North Carolina, USA. They first met while busking in Galway, Ireland, back in 2016 and have been on the road together ever since.
On that album, Danny spoke of subtle conflicting tensions that ran through their work; as he put it “the sweetness and the burn. It’s music that can soothe as it scolds.” He concluded that review “This duo is showing huge potential.”
This summer they released a Folk EP titled Some Distant Shore (Order it here on Bandcamp) which proved that last statement. One of the songs they included was their take on the traditional ballad ‘Cruel Mother‘ (traced back to broadside ballads of the 1600s) and which they tell us has “influences from the Piedmont blues and Appalachian music”…to my ears, it’s all the richer for it.
That’s where this gets interesting, how songs travel and are interpreted…they tell us “Don’t take this gruesome tale at face value, ‘Cruel Mother’ was simply propaganda to scare women away from having sex out of wedlock. It may be an English Broadside from the 1600s, but the version Alicia learned as a teenager was distinctly Appalachian. Towards the end of the song, we used the over-tracked guitar to try and give the sensation of skin crawling. The video was filmed in a factory in Guatemala, using sparse lighting to let the haunting words speak for themselves.”
It’s great to have this duo back again, they’re certainly one you should follow.
Order their latest EP Some Distant Shore via Bandcamp:
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