FAYE WEBSTER - Underdressed At The Symphony LP (Blue & White Bullseye vinyl)

Label: Secretly Canadian

Faye Webster's songs are direct lines to the human subconscious, and Underdressed at the Symphony documents what happens once you begin to build a new self from the ashes of your old routines. This rebirth isn't flashy or definitive, but is instead a series of seemingly mundane moments that, scattered across weeks and months, sneak their way toward something like healing. Yes, there's a breakup in play, but Webster is not documenting the heartbreak of a breakup so much as she's navigating the contours of heartbreak itself.

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”