Alicia Best and Robert Jackson of A Different Thread stopped by Live & Local this week, ahead of the May 1 release of their latest album, “Over Again.”
Visit ADifferentThread.com.
“It’s been a long time coming, this record,” Jackson says of the album, their third, which he and Best have been working on for years. “We’re very excited.”
Fans of A Different Thread have been anticipating this week for a long time: the duo dropped the album’s first single, “Come On Home Molly,” more than 11 months ago, and they’ve been steadily releasing new singles (eight in all) to tease the full album ever since.
But for Jackson and Best themselves, the journey to this week has been even longer.
“A lot of these songs were written during a time when we couldn’t be together for visas and border reasons,” Jackson says. “And so we wrote these songs as a way of holding onto the hope that we could live together one day, and that things would get a little easier…
“So it’s a relief, (and) we’re very excited to be putting this new album out – and in a lot of ways it kind of feels like we just finally get to lay down these bags.”
A Different Thread’s origin story is the stuff of movies: both steeped in folk music traditions, the American Best and the British Jackson found each other over a decade ago while busking on the streets of Dublin, and quickly discovered that they fit together not only musically but also personally. Over the last ten years they’ve built an international fan base, with two studio albums and shows in more than a dozen countries – but the COVID pandemic, followed by immigration-related red tape, conspired to keep them apart for years, forcing them to tour internationally just to be able to be together.
And it was in that context that the deeply personal songs of “Over Again” emerged.
“We got more vulnerable with our songs than we had in the past,” says Best. Jackson agrees: “We write songs about our real life,” he says, “and it’s a good way for us to be able to process what’s going on and to help people to see themselves reflected in the other, to know that we’re all kind of the same.”
And so the 11 tracks on “Over Again” showcase Best and Jackson at their most vulnerable, introspective, and self-reflective yet, both as songwriters and as musicians, exploring both their darker feelings and their greatest joys – “the sweet and the burn,” as one song puts it. Songs about lost friendships (“Come On Home Molly”), relationship struggles (“Always Leaving”) and depression (“Deep Water Fish”) are juxtaposed with songs about perseverance (“Amaranth”) and unexpected connections (“Leon”) – all tied together by the title track, written about the sublime experience of driving into a solar eclipse, which was recognized by the International Acoustic Music Awards as the best Folk/Americana/Roots song of 2025.
The resulting tracks have been a vessel for catharsis – not only for Best and Jackson, but for their audiences as well.
“I think a lot of people are picking up what we’re putting down at (our) shows,” Best says. “Writing (these songs), I thought, ‘well, this is all me, me, me, it’s not big enough, maybe nobody will quite feel like this’ – and then you start singing and you’re like, ‘oh no, a lot of people feel like this.’”
Jackson agrees. “For the state of the world right now, I feel like we could use some hope and some songs that kind of make the world feel a bit lighter,” he says. “And so that’s what we tried to make.”
Follow A Different Thread on Instagram.
Put together, the songs on “Over Again” create a rough cyclical narrative – beginning and ending with a resurrection symbolized by that eclipse – and fittingly, Best and Jackson both describe the album as a “rebirth,” not only for themselves as individuals and as a couple, but also as musicians. Working with engineer Alli Blois (a great Triangle-area musician in her own right), A Different Thread went into Sylvan Esso’s Chapel Hill studio, Betty’s, and worked to produce a sound that builds and expands on everything they’d done before, while still remaining faithful to their folk roots.
“We experimented a little bit with our sound,” Jackson says. “(Blois) had some great techniques and she made us feel so comfortable to experiment…and when you go a little bit out of your comfort zone, (that) seems to be when people really resonate with that track.”
Listen to the singles and pre-order the album on Bandcamp.
Now that the album is complete, A Different Thread are getting ready to hit the road. Armed with a brand new touring van, Best and Jackson will be playing shows across the U.S. through the summer before heading to the UK for another round of shows in October.
Before leaving town, though, Best and Jackson will celebrate the album’s release with a show in Chapel Hill. Friday, May 1, they’ll be on stage at Local 506, accompanied by a full band featuring acclaimed local artists Wood Robinson (Mipso), Jennifer Curtis, Omar Ruiz-Lopez, and Alicia’s brother Alan Best (Tan & Sober Gentlemen), among many others.
Click here for more information on Friday’s show, which also features an opening set from Sugaree String Society.
“We’re all about celebrating this amazing group of people in this neighborhood, who understand that (supporting) live music gives back in so many ways to the whole community,” Jackson says. “I feel like there’s something special in the water here…
“It feels like for the first time in our lives, we’re able to live and work together in a real sense. And we couldn’t think of a better place to use as our home base than Chapel Hill.”
Alicia Best and Robert Jackson stopped by Live & Local to discuss “Over Again” and play three songs: “Always Leaving,” “The Prophet,” and “Over Again.” Listen:
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