Juice Webster has long enthralled us here at the antipodean outpost of Backseat Mafia with her immersive velvet vocals and epic songwriting. It’s been a while since she released her 2023 debut album ‘Julia’ (see my review here) and her single ‘Returning‘ remains for me one of the tracks of the past decade still on constant rotation. It is therefore great news indeed that she has announced a new album entitled ‘Kind of Fantasy’ to be released on 30 October via COHORT, and leads off with the title track as the first tasty hors d’oeuvre.

The single has all the hallmarks of Webster’s extraordinary songwriting abilities that deliver her ethereal voice. A pattering beat with swirls of sound in the ether introduce the track before Webster’s yearning vocals enter, infused with a sort of delicious melancholy and carried on delicate immersive melodies. Raw guitars intrude to temporarily lift you from the reverie before enticing you back into a fugue.The lyrics match the tone:

All along I’ve tried to be a kind of fantasy
Then I thought it was a waste to live inside your mind
Ever wondered what it takes to learn that everything’s alive?
I don’t want to be alone, I want to know what I want.

Webster says of the single:

‘Kind of Fantasy’ is about coming to terms with the realisation that I’ve spent a lot of my life observing myself from the outside, adjusting and tweaking parts of myself in an effort to present a certain way. I’d been noticing a lack of understanding around my own desires that was concerning me. Through writing this song, I started to get the sense that I was completely losing sight of myself at the mercy of trying to be something that isn’t actually real. Lyrically, I needed it to be very direct as a way of challenging the discomfort I feel around this admission. I wanted the instrumentation to feel tense, dark and powerful, and it took a while to get right

It’s a sonic delight that indicates Webster continues to blossom.

The single is out now and available to download and stream here.

Webster will take this song on the road as part of an East Coast run of shows including Waywards in Sydney on 28th August before heading into four showcases at BIGSOUND this September.

Feature Photograph: Joey Clough

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