Faye Webster: ‘I want people to feel understood and related to’

It’s hard to know whether she’s having a bad day, doesn’t like the questions or simply doesn’t enjoy interviews, but Faye Webster is not feeling particularly garrulous today. Then again, if you’re familiar with the 26-year-old’s music, you’ll be aware she has nailed the “endearingly awkward” indie-artist aesthetic.

Webster is at home in Atlanta. Her Zoom camera is switched off. No, she has never been to Ireland. Yes, she’s looking forward to coming here next month. Yes, music was always what she wanted to do. Yes, there were musicians in her family. Suddenly, a 20-minute interview slot feels like a lot of time to fill.

Luckily, Webster’s music sufficiently fills in the gaps. Her new album, Underdressed at the Symphony, is her best yet, marking a new era for her tender, ultraconfessional lyrical style, with lines that include “I used to be self-conscious / Well, really, I still am / I’m just better at figuring out why” and “I’m depriving myself of happiness, something I’m really good at”. If it all sounds a little maudlin, there’s humour amid the self-deprecating despondency, too, as on the track Wanna Quit All the Time: “Overthinking in my head again, I’m good at making shit negative / Right now I hate the colour of my house.”

The album was released off the back of Webster’s biggest year yet, in 2023, during which two of her older songs, I Know You and Kingston, went viral on TikTok.

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“I guess it’s cool…” she says, trailing off. “I don’t know. I don’t have TikTok or understand how it works, so I’m not quite sure. But it’s cool to have new fans and new listeners, however they find the music.” She has no opinion on Universal Music Group’s controversial decision to remove its artists’ music from TikTok, either; in fact, she hasn’t heard or read anything about it. “I feel like I need to look that up or something,” she says, clearly puzzled by the news.

‘I feel like people assume I’m a very vulnerable and open person, which I am, but I’m also a human being’

It does, however, illustrate how much of a complex contradiction Webster is. In many ways she is the quintessential Gen Z star, with hobbies that include Pokémon and yo-yoing. She is a multihyphenate, having dabbled in modelling and photography, and she has toured with huge acts such as Wilco and Haim, yet she somehow remains outside the music-biz bubble. There’s certainly no threat of an ego. Bringing her brother and best friend on tour helps keep her grounded, and she spends her downtime playing video games, chess or “whatever I feel like in the moment”.

Webster is far from an overnight success, with four previous albums under her belt. She began writing songs at 14 and has been signed to the indie label Secretly Canadian since 2018. Now, having been aligned with quirky artists such as Natalie Prass, Andy Shauf and Phoebe Bridgers. Just seven years ago she was driving her own car on tour; she’s still adjusting to the fact that she can sell out venues in far-flung places like Dublin.

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More people were certainly made familiar with her music when Barack Obama included her song Better Distractions in his favourite music of 2020, but she dismisses the notion of appearing on the former US president’s list as a turning point. “No. Maybe when I joined [the Atlanta indie label] Awful Records in 2017; just being on a label for the first time made me realise, ‘Oh. This is reality. I could really make music.’”

Webster’s songwriting has always had a dear-diary feel to it, but Underdressed at the Symphony is probably Webster’s most lyrically vulnerable so far. It comes in the wake of her split from her fellow artist Boothlord, one half of Atlanta rap duo Danger Incorporated. She is unsurprisingly sparing in the details of her “break-up album”, except to joke that “I wish there was, like, a cooler term for it.”

The album also features a collaboration with the rapper Lil Yachty, a childhood friend and former schoolmate who also came good in the music business. Lego Ring swings wildly between grimy rock, vocoder vocals and off-kilter dreaminess.

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“We’ve done a lot of songs together, but this was the first time that it was a song with my band, and a song that I approached him with,” Webster says. “I think that’s why it felt so special to me. We recorded it at Sonic Ranch, and then I brought it to him in Atlanta, and I just let him do whatever he wanted to do.” She shrugs. “I didn’t really give him any creative direction.”

A sense of home and her hometown has always been present in Webster’s writing. The title of the album is a reference to her tendency to attend last-minute concerts at Atlanta Symphony Hall, close to her house, as “therapy” for the emotional turmoil she was experiencing during its creation. She dropped out of music college in Nashville as a teenager, she says, because “it just felt like maybe I was restricted, creatively, like it was kind of a waste of time”. She pauses again. “And I was homesick.”

‘It’s cool to have new fans and new listeners, however they find the music’

Her early years were inspired by her parents’ love of country bands such as Asleep at the Wheel, as well as the bluegrass played by her grandfather and the fiddle-playing of her mother, but there is little trace of that sound in her current output. These days she jams with her former tour mates Wilco “whenever they come through Atlanta or Athens”; Nels Cline, that band’s virtuosic guitarist, also makes an appearance on this album, a “very sentimental” inclusion given how inspirational Wilco has been to her.

Whether or not she is ready for it, Webster’s star seems firmly in the ascent. The fame that goes hand in hand with success in the music industry must feel incongruous for a musician who clearly values her privacy.

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“I think it’s really special that people can relate to my music, because that’s what I look for [myself] in music,” she eventually says. “But, yeah… I feel like there’s a lot of stuff that I don’t…” She trails off before beginning again. “I feel like people assume I’m a very vulnerable and open person, which I am, but I’m also a human being. So it’s nice to be able to have some privacy. But I love being able to talk to fans and hearing what my music’s done for them. A lot of in-person experiences are very meaningful for me.”

The goal for her music, she says, is a simple one.

“I guess I just want people to feel understood and related to, in whichever part of that helps them,” she says, suddenly more sure of herself. “I think that’s always the goal of my music, to just… help you feel understood.”

Faye Webster plays the Button Factory, Dublin 2, on Wednesday, May 8th, and Vicar Street, Dublin 8, on Thursday, May 9th