Awful Records affiliate and artist, Faye Webster, isn’t like the rest of her friends. Among her other duties as team photographer, videographer and designer, she makes lavishly produced rock music under her name and puts it out on Secretly Canadian despite working for a predominantly experimental hip-hop label. Faye has a wide breadth of artistic capabilities. She even lends her singing voice to a couple of Awful Records harder songs, namely “Rollin’” by Ethereal, and was the beatmaking mastermind behind some of the very first Playboi Carti songs. Nonetheless, we were super excited to hear what she had cooking up with her first official release of 2018.
“Kingston” employs a more diverse sonic palette than older Faye Webster music would predict. A country twang and slide guitar define the three and a half minute cut, filling in empty space with slow flourishes of instrumentation recorded with incredible clarity. Faye’s lyrics are funny and informal, but the sentiment behind every word is deliberately picked with a handful of care and love. The hook brings in a couple horns and a Rhodes piano to boot, while Faye’s doubled voice coos “Baby, tell me where you wanna go/Baby, tell me what you wanna know/Give you everything I have and more.” This track has everything you need to make a killer love song, complete with spoken word and a smooth fade out transition.