Although Faye Webster’s September 23rd show at The Foundry has been sold out for quite some time now (There are still Verified Resale Tickets available.), when I talked to the singer/songwriter last month, she told me that she still had no idea what fans could expect of her current headlining tour: “I don’t know because it’s been so long, but I have high expectations [laughs]!” The Atlanta-based musician is currently touring behind her fourth full-length, I Know I’m Funny haha, which dropped on June 25th, courtesy of Secretly Canadian. The album – whose sounds have been categorized as indie country, R&B, soft rock, indie pop, Americana, country, and lounge – has received nearly universal acclaim from critics. Pitchfork proclaimed that it, “strikes a perfect balance between classic country stoicism and the sound of the saddest person you follow on social media,” while Interview Magazine says, “It’s at once sweeping and specific, grounded in slice of life storytelling, not unlike the stuff of comic greats,” and NYLON called it, “Her brightest album to date.”
I Know I’m Funny haha follows up 2019’s Atlanta Millionaires Club, but Faye Webster has been releasing album singles somewhat steadily since “Both All the Time” dropped in August of that very same year. In the time since, she’s played festivals such as Hopscotch, Music Midtown, Austin City Limits, and Desert Daze, and even had the album’s third single, “Better Distractions,” wind up on Barack Obama’s 2020 year-end playlist. The brunt of the album was recorded during the pandemic but, after an attempt to record in a studio with her band during a two-week period, she wound up recording the majority of the album’s vocals on Garageband in her bedroom, something that she’s done before and to which much of the intimacy of her sound seems to be indebted. The album does, however, represent a new chapter of sorts for the musician, who just turned 24 the day it was released. Webster notes that, while writing AMC she was on her own and pondering a plethora of existential queries, but while composing her latest album she was living happily with her partner, lending a slightly different kind of quirk to her musical tone.
When I ask Faye about the possible musical influences behind this eclectic collection of songs, she tells me “I was listening to mei ehara, who is on the record, and I was listening to Hannah Cohen a lot.” And of her current label, Secretly Canadian (also home to PHILTHY favorites Cherry Glazerr), who also released Atlanta Millionaires Club and rereleased her sophomore self-titled effort, she says that she’s a huge fan and feels right at home: “It’s sick. I feel like I finally found what is where I want to be. I feel like my whole career before this was working and not knowing where I belong, so it’s nice to finally find that.” She even tells me that she’s already working on some new music for them, which she’s hoping to get to in the relatively near future: “Once the September dates are over, I think I’ll be excited to start working on the new album.”
