The title of Faye Webster’s new album is inspired by her occasional compulsion to lose herself amongst concertgoers at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Craving company and distraction but also leaning into the anonymity of a bustling crowd, Webster often bought a ticket to a performance at the last possible second. “Going to the symphony was almost like therapy for me,” she says. “I was quite literally underdressed at the symphony because I would just decide at the last moment that that’s what I wanted to do. I got to leave what I felt like was kind of a shitty time in my life and be in this different world for a minute. I liked that I didn’t feel like I belonged”
The world around Webster may be moving faster and faster, but despite an influx of new fans and attention, she’s still singing about it in an almost impossibly low-key way on her fifth album. Indeed, the first time we hear her voice on Underdressed at the Symphony, she’s navigating the unmapped space between comfort and vigilance: “I’m asleep in the moment when you’re holding my head / but I want to remember I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” she sings on “Thinking About You.” Instead of turning the dissolution of a relationship into a morality play, she details the solitary moments where her brain is in conflict with itself, allowing unhurried insight to come naturally.
Webster has never been more comfortable in her own skin than right now, which makes her unique ascent into the vanguard of young, independent artists even sweeter. At any given moment, Webster might be making country-tinged indie rock flecked simultaneously by pedal steel guitar and modern R&B production and songwriting techniques – a bespoke sound which has won her ardent fans and turned her into something of a stealth superstar beloved by everyone from southern hip-hop heads and alt-rock tastemakers.
