Singer-songwriter Faye Webster returned with a few new singles earlier this year, and they set the stage for a grand North American tour, which recently brought her to two sold-out dates at 9:30 Club.
Micaela Cerball was there to photograph the first of those two shows.
This article is adapted from a press release.
Most recently, Faye released a new single, “Lifetime,” a stunning and sparse tune that comes with a companion music video directed by Kyle Ng of Brain Dead.
“Lifetime” comes on the heels of “But Not Kiss,” another single released earlier this summer to wide critical praise, which the New York Times said “sounds like a strange, woozy dream,” and Vulture named one of the Best New Songs of 2023 So Far saying “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.”
At 9:30 Club on Oct. 17, Faye played “But Not Kiss” at the top of the show and followed with “Lifetime” later in the concert.
Watch the official music video for “Lifetime” by Faye Webster on YouTube:
Faye released I Know I’m Funny haha, her most recent full length, back in 2021 via Secretly Canadian. Though she usually tackles album-making in a song-by-song approach, 2020 necessitated a more intensive recording process. Webster immediately knew the Athens-based players she wanted to record with and headed into the studio with producer/mixer Drew Vandenberg (Deerhunter, Of Montreal, Kishi Bashi). They assembled a band including Harold Brown on drums, Bryan Howard on bass, Nic Rosen on keys, and Matt “Pistol” Stoessel on pedal steel — one of the most reliable and essential musical elements of Webster’s records.
A self-taught guitarist by elementary school, with a long tradition of bluegrass and country players 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.
Here are some photos of Faye Webster performing at 9:30 Club on Oct. 17, 2023. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Micaela Cerball.
