Fran Ashcroft 2026
Things To Make Do With
Devil in the details and the details are divine: British producer takes his understated melodies to dark altars.
Fifty years before Fran Ashcroft crafted his third solo offering, a certain English ensemble released a record titled “Presence” whose cover featured folks doing strange things with a weird object – which is exactly the entertaining pastime the master of sonics is peddling on this platter – implicitly, if deceptively, so. Still, whereas the album’s cover artwork and booklet – available with its free download – suggest playfulness, frivolity even, the numbers on offer feel fairly spiritual. They may lack the gorgeous minimalism that made "Box Harry Day" special, but the arrangements the veteran applied to “Things To Make Do With” seem just as inconspicuous, almost casual, yet there’s an immense depth to his musings on life – on his presence in time.
That’s why Ashcroft’s voice, initially banished to a single stereo channel, is nigh on buried in the bass-punctured layers of church organ on “The Singer Or The Song” which reaches for the “Let It Be” universality – and half-spoken resignation, too – while “A Place In The Sun” finds Fran’s effect-laden vocals wading in fuzzy riffs before the refrains strip off the lysergic haze and distill his live-and-let-live philosophy to a pop kind of psychedelia. The context can be quite nostalgic, as the barrelhouse serenades like “That Girl In The Winter” go for an old-timey schmaltz, the old joanna enlivening their dreamy flow, the America-bashing ballad “Dixieland Revisited” opting for a simple acoustic strum to get its message across as clearly as possible, and “Monsters” resolving into a black-and-white movie soundtrack. With “Higher Trings” slyly turning a gloomy dirge into a jovial, brass-splashed tune, and the jazzy “Truth, Love, And Justice” casting its charms back to the Prohibition era, the album’s overall sentiments are dewy-eyed, but “This Old Thing” – separated from the preceding piece by a half-minute of silence – wraps things up in a percussive manner.
That’s the way to allow the groove to breathe and point to a much brighter future than the past which Fran Ashcroft’s songs deal with here. That’s the way to bid farewell to what’s been wrong and embrace hope.
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