Faye Webster/Photo: Faye Webster
Comforts start and finish Faye Webster’s brand. Returning to her parents’ home in Athens, Georgia for most of her albums, the slow warmth of a melancholic afternoon settles in her loose-fitting clothes and cyclical lyrics like a bee’s lazy dance, flying between flowers in search of sweet nectar. As Chicago finally warms up, reawakening the city, she returns to perform, this time at The Salt Shed for two nights, to gently rock a captivated audience before leaving the states to go on an international tour. Her smooth, reflective lyrics hold an impressively soothsayer quality for their minimalism, as she delivers each repetitive line, guitar in hand, with just enough difference to enthrall her crowd. In contrast to other indie acts, her songs can sometimes feel like bedtime stories, where accompanying keyboards, drums and very occasional electronic components fill in the spaces around her voice to softly propel her albums forward.
Born and bred in Atlanta, she still calls the city home, managing to subtly blend elements from more popular scenes from her city like country, R&B, hip-hop and rap into her alternative soulful sound. Her most recent album, “Underdressed at the Symphony,” released nearly a year ago, features Lil Yachty, a longtime friend and celebrated rapper. On “Lego Ring,” they push each other’s musical style in seesaw verse/chorus pairings that propel Webster faster, but slow for their duets. Influenced, just as the album’s title suggests, by the symphony, songs like “Wanna Quit All the Time” close out for two minutes with just instrumentals, while songs like “Thinking About You,” “But Not Kiss,” “He Loves Me Yeah!,” “Lifetime” and “Tttttime,” repeat lyrics fourteen, sixteen or even twenty-two times. Her slow delivery cements recurrence and at times, like a house vox, creates a similar disco-like trance. Without losing interest, boredom is an integral piece of her last few projects, where she draws on the mundane in her own practice as she centers all manner of games from a personal interest in chess, video games and the Atlanta Braves baseball team. For Webster, no topic is unworthy of a song.
Since 2017, her style has remained fairly consistent, gaining a legion of devoted followers as she reaches ever higher chart rankings and notoriety. Her audience, just as her taste, is boundless. It’s only natural that writing about anything and everything creates a type of universally pleasant music. From features on Barack Obama’s playlists to tours with synth-heavy musicians, she walks through boundaries as if they shouldn’t exist. Even her large concerts can feel like personal affairs, with her friends and family members sometimes playing various roles as her bandmates, stage designers, or even guests for one of her birthdays, providing cupcakes to the audience. Consistently praised for her witty lyrics, it’s surprising how simple they are. Like she says on “I Know I’m Funny Haha,” “I made her laugh one time at dinner/She said I’m funny and then I thanked her/But I know I’m funny, haha.” Webster is unapologetically herself, a chilled out, no frills, down to earth artist. Expect her show to feel like home.
Faye Webster plays The Salt Shed, 1357 North Elston, on March 11-12 with mei ehara. Performance begins at 8pm. This is a 17+ show. Tickets start at $60, available at saltshedchicago.com.
