Faye Webster has released her highly anticipated fifth album, Underdressed at the Symphony. It is available everywhere today. Purchase and stream HERE.
The album follows previously released singles ‘Feeling Good Today’, ‘Lego Ring (ft. Lil Yachty),’ ‘But Not Kiss’ and ‘Lifetime.’ All of Underdressed At The Symphony’s pre-release singles received widespread praise from places like The New York Times, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone.
The songs on the new album explore the rarely mapped territory of emotional intimacy, where desire and passion are in conflict with comfort, understanding and even platonic love. These themes are found throughout Underdressed at the Symphony, alongside hyper-specific imagery that paints a picture of Webster’s life, like her eBay Purchase history (“eBay Purchase History”) or the physical objects she covets (“Lego Ring”). All of these uniquely Faye thoughts are wrapped in the warm glow of her otherworldly vocals, ever present pedal steel and her cinematic and sweeping string arrangements but also more unpredictable elements like vocoder can be found on the new album. “Her music defies genre and convention,” said Vulture last year. “Over the course of four albums, her sound has come to contain both pedal steel and indie rock as well as soft vocals and R&B sensibilities, all the while embodying the city of Atlanta.”
Since the release of her last full length, Faye Webster has experienced a phenomenal surge in audience brought on by TikTok and the viral popularity of her songs ‘Kingston’ and ‘I Know You.’ Her fan’s profound connection to her music feels all the more genuine given Faye herself is not on the platform.” In the last year her Spotify streams have increased 1100% and she experienced a nearly 3000% growth in her YouTube views. Faye’s Spotify monthly listeners have ballooned to over 7 million and that success has spilled over into her touring business as well. Last fall, she set out on a major US headlining tour with every single show selling out immediately and multiple nights being added in major markets. The energy around Webster is palpable – fans singing every word to every song and cell phones in the air, documenting every moment of her shows.
A self-taught guitarist by elementary school, with a deep love of bluegrass and country running in her family, Webster was bound to be a musician. At just 16 she released her debut album, Run & Tell. Like other teenage phenoms Jackson Browne and Laura Marling, it exhibited stunning lyrical and artistic clarity. Her Southern roots were obvious but Webster had more than country music inspiring her worldview – she was deeply embedded in the culture of her hometown, Atlanta. Lil Yachty was her classmate, she was sneaking out to see underground shows and fortuitously had befriended rapper/producer Ethereal while in High School. She went on to sign to Awful Records, making her label-mates with Father, Playboi Carti and Ethereal. To the outsider, an odd home but Webster shared the same weirdo art-kid ethos of her label mates – impossible to peg, endlessly experimenting, making shit, doing stuff, genre-fluid rule breakers.
Her 2017 self-titled release on Awful brought her enough notoriety to get her signed to Secretly Canadian, the home of ANOHNI, Porridge Radio, Whitney, Yoko Ono and more. Two years later, she released Atlanta Millionaires Club to widespread critical acclaim. “Few R&B albums have a pedal steel; few alt-country albums have a rap feature. Faye Webster’s Atlanta Millionaires Club somehow has all of the above. Even stranger, she manages to smooth these apparent contradictions into serene folk-pop with a mellow soul tinge. Webster is an anomaly, but her arty individualism represents an important common value,” said Pitchfork.
A multi-hyphenate talent, Webster also is a successful photographer who has shot campaigns for Killer Mike, Offset, D.R.A.M, Nike and other brands. She is a sometimes model and full-time yoyo enthusiast. Of her last album, I Know I’m Funny haha, Pitchfork said, “Webster is an assassin who comes out of the shadows with something witheringly funny or totally devastating.” It’s these flourishes of her unmatched individualism that makes her so exciting to listen to, and with Underdressed at the Symphony, Faye Webster enters a thrilling next chapter.
Underdressed at the Symphony is now available on CD, cassette, black vinyl and “Faye Blue” vinyl where records are sold. A limited edition Blue & White Bullseye vinyl will be available via www.fayewebster.com
Faye Webster – Feeling Good Today (Official Video)
Faye Webster – Lego Ring (feat. Lil Yachty) (Official Video)
Faye Webster – But Not Kiss (Official Video)
EARLY ACCLAIM FOR UNDERDRESSED AT THE SYMPHONY:
“There’s a drifting, day-dreamy quality to the music of Faye Webster” – New York Times
“Faye Webster is one of this generation’s definitional folk-rock voices” – Paste Magazine
“a classic Webster fusion of idiosyncratic beats, bass, and a solid rock riff…Yachty bangs on some drums, backing her on vocals while the tempo gets chaotic and trippy.” – Rolling Stone on “Lego Ring”
“Faye Webster works best in grayscale. While her music is vibrant, the relationships and emotions that populate her songs are never clearly defined in black or white.” – The FADER
“At the gently strummed outset, “But Not Kiss” sounds like the latest entry to Webster’s impeccably chill canon — before the song collapses on itself into a cascade of piano. All the usual hallmarks of Webster’s songs are still there, from her soft-spoken delivery to that sighing lap steel, just shaken up and rearranged into a song full of (and about) quiet thrills.” – Vulture on “But Not Kiss”
“You’ve never heard harmonizing like this on Faye Webster and Lil Yachty’s sweet and unexpected duet, “Lego Ring.”” – NYLON
“Built around an intimate, thumb-strummed electric guitar, “But Not Kiss” is clad with all of Webster’s signature touches, from the pedal steel to the piano accents to the dynamic swells. Singing about a tender-yet-complicated love, her airy croon wrangles together a whirlwind of emotions and presents them in a perfectly delicate and tactful setting.” – Consequence
“one of the most relatable lyricists in the game” – HYPEBEAST
More About Faye Webster and Underdressed at the Symphony:
The title of Faye Webster’s new album is inspired by her occasional compulsion to lose herself amongst concertgoers at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Craving company and distraction but also leaning into the anonymity of a bustling crowd, Webster often bought a ticket to a performance at the last possible second. “Going to the symphony was almost like therapy for me,” she says. “I was quite literally underdressed at the symphony because I would just decide at the last moment that that’s what I wanted to do. I got to leave what I felt like was kind of a shitty time in my life and be in this different world for a minute. I liked that I didn’t feel like I belonged”
The world around Webster may be moving faster and faster, but despite an influx of new fans and attention, she’s still singing about it in an almost impossibly low-key way on her fifth album. Indeed, the first time we hear her voice on Underdressed at the Symphony, she’s navigating the unmapped space between comfort and vigilance: “I’m asleep in the moment when you’re holding my head / but I want to remember I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” she sings on “Thinking About You.” Instead of turning the dissolution of a relationship into a morality play, she details the solitary moments where her brain is in conflict with itself, allowing unhurried insight to come naturally.
Webster has never been more comfortable in her own skin than right now, which makes her unique ascent into the vanguard of young, independent artists even sweeter. At any given moment, Webster might be making country-tinged indie rock flecked simultaneously by pedal steel guitar and modern R&B production and songwriting techniques – a bespoke sound which has won her ardent fans and turned her into something of a stealth superstar beloved by everyone from southern hip-hop heads and alt-rock tastemakers.
At Webster’s increasingly sold-out concerts, it’s not uncommon to observe these fans singing along with every word – even when she unironically performs theme songs from Pokemon. “In an even more delicious twist, Webster doesn’t even have an account on TikTok, where several of her songs have gone viral, including “Kingston,” “Right Side of My Neck,” “In a Good Way” and most recently “I Know You.”
Recorded at Sonic Ranch Studios in Texas with her longtime band, Underdressed at the Symphony revels in experimentation, playfulness and adventurousness. Moments of vocoder, flourishes of an orchestra and spooky harmonies and synths arrive without sacrificing the spacious quality of Webster’s prior music, allowing each lyric to burble to the surface with added layers of meaning. Matt “Pistol” Stoessel’s arcs of pedal steel add just the right shimmer, while Wilco’s Nels Cline contributes his undeniably emotive fretwork on a number of songs.
Hunkering down at the literal U.S./Mexico border provided the musicians space to isolate, focus and experiment. All the songs here are live-room recordings, with several captured on the first or second take. In this way, they can be seen as direct lines to the human subconscious, showcasing Webster’s knack for pulling a universal experience from a highly specific moment.
On “But Not Kiss,” her voice lilts “I want to sleep in your arms…” before Nicholas Rosen’s propulsive piano and Bryan Howard’s sumptuous bass burst in, prompting Webster to rush out the rest of the line: “… but not kiss.” What better shorthand descriptor for the quietest of moments in a relationship? The rest of the song echoes that first line, emphasizing the duality of intimacy. To be sure, Underdressed at the Symphony is a document of what happens once you start to create a new life from the ashes of old routines. This rebirth isn’t flashy or definitive, but is instead a series of healing moments scattered across weeks and months.
That new life is documented on the autotuned “Feeling Good Today,” which finds Webster running through the details of her day in barely 90 seconds. She’s got plans to go see her brother, and she knows she’ll “probably buy something dumb” because she just got paid. “I definitely think I turn to humor sometimes just for distraction almost,” she says. “But a lot of it is just like the truth. Even if I’m saying it, I’m not really meaning to be funny. That’s genuinely how I feel, and I’m feeling good today.”
A strain of lightheartedness with a melancholic backbone is the driving force behind “Lego Ring,” which features Atlanta multi-hyphenate Lil Yachty as the only guest voice on the album. Webster and Yachty have been friends since middle school and have stayed close ever since. At points, his ghostly warble floats just under Webster’s voice, jabbing through emptiness as it trembles over a low rumble of bass. It’s the kind of sonic collaboration that succeeds based on a lifelong understanding of each other, and a close bond predating both artists’ tenure in the music industry.
“I think I hit a point in songwriting during this record where I was just like, man, I said a lot.” admits Webster. “The record feels like a mouthful to me, but I don’t always have to be deep. I can just sit down and sing about this ring made of crystal Lego that I really want.”
If there’s one song that amounts to a mission statement for Underdressed at the Symphony, it’s “Lifetime,” a lush slow burner that emphasizes Webster’s brilliant use of space and phrasing. Epiphanies become mantras, her voice lilting and fading over expertly placed snares and a soft piano twinkle. Is there any better encapsulation of the vagaries of love than the contradictory “When I said I mean it / I didn’t really mean it?”
Like the rest of the album, Webster isn’t providing answers here, nor is she on some epic journey of healing and self-care. Instead, she’s choosing to just live, to document heartbreak and ridiculous moments right next to each other until they start to blur, becoming real enough for us all to feel.
Underdressed at the Symphony Tracklist
1. Thinking About You
2. But Not Kiss
3. Wanna Quit All the Time
4. Lego Ring (ft. Lil Yachty)
5. Feeling Good Today
6. Lifetime
7. He Loves Me Yeah!
8. ebay Purchase History
9. Underdressed at the Symphony
10. Tttttime
Faye Webster Online:
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