Faye Webster’s songs are direct lines to the human subconscious, and Underdressed at the Symphony documents what happens once you begin to build a new self from the ashes of your old routines. This rebirth isn’t flashy or definitive, but is instead a series of seemingly mundane moments that, scattered across weeks and months, sneak their way toward something like healing. Yes, there’s a breakup in play, but Webster is not documenting the heartbreak of a breakup so much as she’s navigating the contours of heartbreak itself.

Recorded at Sonic Ranch Studios in Texas with her longtime band, Webster is accompanied on Underdressed at the Symphony by Matt Stoessel’s arcs of shimmering pedal steel, the plaintive, unhurried drums of Charles Garner, and, occasionally, additional guitarwork from Wilco’s Nels Cline, among many other crucial players. The title of the album refers to Webster’s post-breakup compulsion to visit the symphony on a whim, usually buying a ticket at the last possible second. “Going to the symphony was almost like therapy for me. I was quite literally underdressed at the symphony because I would just decide at that moment that that's what I wanted to do,” she says. “That's what I felt like I needed to hear. 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.”

That strain of lightheartedness with a melancholic backbone permeates the album, and is the major driving force behind “Lego Ring,” which features Atlanta multi-hyphenate Lil Yachty, the only guest voice on the entire album. Yachty’s ghostly warble floats just under Webster’s voice, jabbing through empty space, trembling over a low rumble of bass. The song is also a sort of release—a buoyant moment that cuts through the sadness. “I think I hit a point in songwriting during this record where I was just like, man, I said a lot.” Webster says. “I'm just going to sit down and sing about this ring that I really want.” Like the rest of the album, Webster isn’t providing answers, 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 together, becoming real enough for us all to feel.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A soaring, swooning selection of beautifully penned ballads, grooving guitar lines and cracked vocoder vox from the brilliant Faye Webster. 'Lego Ring' is for me, one of the top bangers of the year thus far. A perfectly mixed cocktail of synth-pop, indie and with wisps of country woven through her compositions, Webster is a true talent. Brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

1.Thinking About You
2. But Not Kiss
3. Wanna Quit All The Time
4. Lego Ring
5. Feeling Good Today
6. Lifetime
7. He Loves Me Yeah!
8. EBay Purchase History
9. Underdressed At TheSymphony
10. Tttttime

Faye Webster announces ‘Car Therapy Sessions’, an EP of new and re-imagined songs by Websterrecorded at Spacebomb Studios with a 24 pieceorchestra. The orchestra was headed by Trey Pollard,who was responsible for both conducting andarranging, and Drew Vandenburg produced and mixedthe EP.

“I have a vivid memory of walking around London in2018 listening to a mix of ‘Jonny’, which I had justwritten. I remember thinking ‘I want to perform thissong with an orchestra’. I truly have had my heart seton it since then, always talking about it and figuring outhow or when to make it happen,” says Webster.

On the EP, Webster reimagines three songs from hercritically acclaimed 2021 release, ‘I Know I’m Funnyhaha’, and 2019’s ‘Atlanta Millionaire’s Club’. Thesongs ‘Kind Of’, ‘Sometimes’ and ‘Cheers’ take on acinematic and glimmering new sheen.

In addition to the title track, she also shares asprawling and emotional work - ‘Suite: Jonny’ - whichcombines fan-favourites ‘Jonny’ and ‘Jonny (Reprise)’.The two songs originally appeared on the ‘AtlantaMillionaire’s Club’ tracklist, two different views on thesame narrative. Here they are presented together. It’s remarkable how beautifully Webster’s work cantake on this orchestral treatment. Like Cole Porter, orJudy Garland, her delicate and emotional deliverypacks a gut punch when dramatized by the EP’srobust arrangements.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Kind Of (Type Of Way)
A2. Sometimes (Overanalyze)
A3. Car Therapy
B1. Suite: Jonny
B2. Cheers (To You & Me)

I Know I’m Funny haha is Webster’s most realized manifestation yet of this emotional and musical alchemy. Continuing to bloom from her 2019 breakthrough and Secretly Canadian debut Atlanta Millionaires Club, Webster’s sound draws as much from the lap-steel singer-songwriter pop of the 1970s and teardrop country tunes as it does from the audacious personalities of her city’s rap and R&B community. The album began for Webster with the stirring ballad “In a Good Way,” as in “You make me want to cry in a good way”—an instantclassic Faye Webster one-liner. It’s beguilingly simple, the kind of melody and arrangement that seem to have existed forever. A sense of relief charges the neo-psychedelic pop of “Cheers,” where Webster experiments with an overdriven guitar tone.

She also collaborated, on “Overslept,” with the Japanese artist Mei Ehara, who she calls the biggest influence on her new music. Webster’s music is full of personality. Many of her songs contain bits of girl-group-esque talk-singing, which color her atypical storysongs. Webster says she’s in a growth mindset, pushing herself to learn more, to be more vulnerable. “Growth is really important to me,” she says. “I hope people will relate to my songs, and not just be like ‘this is a good record’ but ‘this makes me feel something. This is making me think differently, this is making me question things.’ I told myself a few years ago that I was going to be more honest in my songwriting, that honesty is the best route to take with music. If I have a voice and people are listening to me, I’m not going to waste it.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Better Distractions
2. Sometimes
3. I Know I’m Funny Haha
4. In A Good Way
5. Kind Of
6. Cheers
7. Both All The Time
8. A Stranger
9. A Dream With A Baseball Player
10. Overslept (feat. Mei Ehara)
11. Half Of Me

‘Atlanta Millionaires Club’ is in Faye Webster’s feelings and that’s the way she likes it. “Everything is way personal,” Webster says. “I have to write about very personal things for me to even want to write.”

On the 21-year-old Atlanta native’s new album, the omnipresence of pedal steel eschews bluegrass trappings, flexible under Webster’s genre-bending direction. Webster didn’t set out to make it sound like any artist in particular but she cites Aaliyah as her main musical inspiration for how she uses sound. “That’s where I first heard, ‘Oh, there’s this weird guitar that’s bendy and it could totally be in a country song,’ but the way she’s using it is what makes her music so special to me,” Webster explains. “I try to do that. I try to change the way pedal steel is supposed to sound, or keys, to make it more R&B.”

Pulling from a familial lineage of folk storytelling and time spent in Atlanta’s hip hop scene, Webster’s work is a study of duality, weaving through her own introversion and heartbreak; it’s an idiosyncratic sadness punctuated by fleeting observations and an unexpected, sly sense of humour. And like the way Webster takes the traditional instrumentation of Americana and flips it into something else, she uses her own calm, laid-back demeanour to say you can be boldly and unapologetically yourself in a quiet way, too.

TRACK LISTING

Room Temperature
Right Side Of My Neck
Hurts Me Too
Pigeon
Jonny
Kingstonv
Come To Atlanta
What Used To Be Mine
Flowers (ft Father)
Jonny (Reprise)