After a hiatus of over five years, Frances Ancheta returns with an album three years in the making: “Saving Graces.” Combining elements of folk, pop, and blues rock, this is a quietly powerful record that wears its honesty on its sleeve. The nine-song collection finds the Filipina-American artist moving from the intimate, acoustic textures of past releases into a fuller band sound without losing the personal warmth that defines her work.
The lineup for this album features Toku Woo on lead guitar, Maia Wiitala on bass guitar and backing vocals, and Peter DeHaas on percussion. The minimal accompaniment keeps the arrangements uncluttered and places the spotlight on Frances’ vocals while still giving the songs a rhythmic backbone and occasional electric bite.
The album opens with “In My Time of Need,” an energetic single that explores relying on others when life gets difficult. This is followed by the musically distinct “The Place Where I Need to Be,” which is a warm, steady ballad that wrestles with the need for separation even when it’s painful. The lyrics and melody of these two tracks seem to announce the album’s broader theme of reaching for support while retaining personal agency.
One of the highlights of the album is the energetic “No More Judgments,” which features heavier instrumentation and is lyrically a fiercely independent callout track about not bending over backwards to satisfy others anymore.
The closer, “When That Day Comes,” leans fully into the folk genre and winds the record down with a future-oriented perspective. At the end of the emotional
rollercoaster that Saving Graces was, Frances leaves us with the most comforting feeling of them all: hope.
The engineering led by Bozho Lasich is notably tasteful on this album, opting for a few production choices that make the record sound close and immediate in accordance with the lyrics. Frances favors clarity over metaphor in her words, and lines about boundaries, recovery and everyday perseverance recur. But that plainness is the album’s power: these are songs meant to be entered and felt immediately rather than decoded.
Saving Graces is a rewarding listen for fans of intimate indie folk/pop and anyone drawn to songcraft built on lived experience and recovery. It’s nothing radical, but Frances Ancheta brings honesty, melodic sense, and a trustworthy band to these nine songs.
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