ATTENTION FREAKS WEBSTER OUT
But her fan base keeps growing thanks to emotionally accessible music that walks indie rock-country line
Faye Webster was trying to get out. She had just performed the second of two shows at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta, swaying in a dark blue gown in front of a 20-piece string orchestra, her hands knitted over her diaphragm. All she wanted next was to go home.
Those hometown concerts in 2022 felt like the crystallization of her career — a more significant milestone than when Barack Obama put her on his annual playlist or when she was asked to play Coachella this year. The lobby was clogged with fans, and Webster was focused on escape. Her mother had a hat, a cobalt blue ball cap with “haha” stamped across it, merchandise from Webster’s last album. She threw it on, tilted her head down and made it out the door.
Webster, 26, hates attention. This, she realizes, is inconvenient for any artist, much less an up-and-coming indie star with a new and fervid Tiktok following.
Over two meandering video calls from Australia, where Webster was touring, she remained off camera for one of them. She mentioned a dog but only discussed its breed off the record. When she did slip into frame, she broke her sentences with long pauses, sometimes laughing at herself as she found the words.
“I have a lot of friends that do what I do,” she said. “And I’m just like — I just don’t think I’m built for it. The attention really freaks me out.”
That attention has grown steadily since 2013, when Webster, then 16, self-released her debut album, “Run and Tell,” a folksy whirl of slide guitar and twang.
She grew up in Atlanta, where she still lives, listening to her mother play Alison Krauss records and bluegrass fiddle songs, an aesthetic she has incorporated into her own music. But she has also moved, solidly and smoothly, into a middle ground between indie rock and country — pedal steel mashed with bass, simmering drums beneath tropical synths — as she homes in on the banal brutalities of relationships.
On her recently released album, “Underdressed at the Symphony,” she traces the minutiae of piecing herself together after a breakup: She congratulates herself for eating before noon, scrolls through her ebay search history and reminds herself to call her mom.
Webster is reluctant to call it a breakup record. “I wish there was a better term for it,” she said after sighing. The first song she wrote for the album, “But Not Kiss,” began with a 10-second voice memo she brought to the studio. She slowly unspools the line, “I want to sleep in your arms,” and then, after a pause, rushes out the words “But not kiss.” She had been searching for music that could speak to that feeling, what she calls “an anti-romantic love song.” When she couldn’t find it, she wrote it. “I was able to create this really off-balance, contradicting almost, meaningful thing,” she said.
The album’s title comes from a ritual she started in the months after her split. She would decide to see the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, a 15-minute drive from her house, moments before a performance was set to begin. “It was therapeutic to me,” she said. “I was like, nobody knows me, I don’t know anybody here, they don’t care about me. I’m incognito, and I’m listening to music I don’t know anything about.”
She perked up more talking about going to Cleveland for the World Yo-yo Contest than at any point chatting about her music; she knows an array of tricks and even designed her own yo-yo. She played tennis competitively growing up and remains hooked on the sport. She and her brother bring
‘The Holdovers,’ 5 nominations, 1 win:
The Alexander Payne offering is set in 1970 over the holiday break at a boarding school. It stars Paul Giamatti as the teacher stuck minding Angus (Dominic Sessa) and other students with no place to go. Da’vine Joy Randolph delivers an Oscar-winning performance. (Digital purchase or Peacock)
‘The Zone of Interest,’ 5 nominations, 2 wins:
Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust story “The Zone of Interest” stars Christian Friedel as the real-life commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss and Sandra Hüller as his wife, Hedwig, living their everyday family lives just a few steps from the ovens and trains that were instruments in the slaughter of millions of Jews. A story worth telling, considering their status as monsters? You decide. (In theaters or digital purchase)
‘20 Days in Mariupol,’ 1 nomination, 1 win:
A joint production by
The Associated Press and PBS “Frontline,” the documentary has been met with critical acclaim. AP journalist Mstyslav Chernov directed the movie from 30 hours of footage shot in Mariupol in the opening days of the Ukraine war. (Digital purchase or pbs.org)
‘The Boy and the Heron,’ 1 nomination, 1 win:
Dreamy and enthralling, director Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli do it again. The beautifully animated Japanese fantasy has young Mahito late in World War II mourning the death of his mother and encountering a talking and ornery gray heron he can’t get rid of. And there’s a very important tower.