Faye Webster isn’t afraid to tell you how she feels. Rooted in a familial lineage of folk, 21-year-old songwriter Webster’s forthright, exposed lyricism pays homage to the great Americana traditions of songwriting while drawing from Webster’s own experiences immersed in Atlanta’s hip-hop scene. Her carefully-cultivated sound organically mingles that inherited country and folk with her time immersed in rap collective Awful Records, injecting the traditional with a clandestine jolt.
A decorated photographer as well as a musician, Webster’s artistic mediums don’t intertwine, instead running parallel to one another. The through-line is her exceptional knack for direction, an assured confidence in her own point of view.
“Kingston,” the first new song since her 2017’s sophomore self-titled LP, is quintessential Faye Webster. Awash in the haze of a humid Georgia summer, all lovestruck and dewy, “Kingston” glimmers with a hushed glitz: a mellowed punctuation of brass, the twang of pedal-steel, feather-light vocals unfurling like a sigh, and slinking hues of R&B.
In the accompanying self-directed video for “Kingston,” we move through a blushing tangle of flamingos and lush palm trees, the sheen of red silk, a glimmering ice-rink. At the center of it all stands Faye Webster, in focus, gazing directly into the camera with a wide-eyed, unflinching gaze: the sharp, confident conductor in control of a dreamy haze.