Emily Ann Roberts has come a long way since appearing on Season 9 of The Voice in 2015. Then just a teenager, the Knoxville-born singer-songwriter charmed with charismatic covers of songs like Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance”, and she spent the intervening decade finishing school and honing the sound that defines this five-pack of tunes. Like Womack, Roberts has a penchant for roots-based, traditionally informed country with bluegrass and Appalachian influences, which she puts on masterful display on Thread. The opening title track “Thread” epitomises this aesthetic, as Roberts, now 27, turns in a hopeful, pining love song marked by pastoral melodies and the nimble vocal acrobatics of Womack or fellow genre straddler Alison Krauss. “Lonely Boy” is soulful roots-pop at its purest, with guitar and banjo from virtuoso Bryan Sutton and fiddle and mandolin from multi-hyphenate Jeneé Fleenor providing a lushly textured backdrop for Roberts’ honeyed vocals. Roberts closes Thread with “Laundry”, a devastating portrait of shattered domesticity that finds her dressing down a two-timing lover with weary conviction.