LIVE REVIEW: Faye Webster @ Riviera Theater

Words and Photos by: Paige Kearney

Faye Webster at the Riviera Theater *(Paige Kearney)*

Hot off the release of her new single, “Lifetime,” Faye Webster enchanted the young crowd that sold out the Riviera Theatre in Chicago on Oct. 29. Getting her start 10 years ago (at just 16 years old), it is clear that she found her signature sound, one that could only be described as ethereal and dream-like. Known for her use of a steel pedal guitar in her music, her songs almost have a classic country or Western vibe, which blends beautifully with her mellow indie pop sound, with hints of blues and jazz scattered throughout.

On the complete opposite end of the musical spectrum, was the night’s opener, Upchuck, a personal favorite of Webster. A star in the new age revival in the punk scene, the Atlanta-based band (which shares a hometown with Webster), shocked the audience with a genre I can guarantee the crowd didn’t expect when they bought a ticket for their favorite chill lofi indie artist. They were truly electric, jumping around the stage beneath flashing lights, absolutely hammering away on their instruments, launching themselves onto the barricade, and plenty of screams. Upchuck is a band you NEED to know.

Then the act that everyone was there to see. The soft-spoken Atlanta native, Faye Webster, started the night off with one of her newest releases, “But Not Kiss,” the perfect hype-up opener juxtaposing its soft verses with piano and guitar-heavy breaks in between, and I couldn’t help but smile like a complete idiot. It seemed like an obvious choice for her opener, and it showed through her dancing across the stage, guitar in hand, while the projection screen behind her lit up the entire theater with stunning graphics.

After playing some of her more popular songs, “Better Distractions” (one of Barack Obama’s favorite songs of 2020), “Kind Of,” and “Right Side of My Neck,” all tracks you’d recognize from indie Zoomer TikToks, Webster dazzled the audience with her performance of “A Dream with a Baseball Player,” based on her yearning for someone she’s never even met (relatable). The repeated “How did I fall in love with someone I don’t know” caught the crowd screaming along. Taking a short break to shout out supporting act Upchuck, Webster jumped right into “I Know I’m Funny Haha,” the title track of her fourth studio album, released in 2021. As someone who is convinced she’s way more hilarious than she actually is, “She said I'm funny and then I thanked her / But I know I'm funny haha” hits HARD.

Throughout the night, Webster joked with the audience quite a bit, claiming she was going to play a new song, and then going, “Just kidding, it’s a song from Pokémon,” with the cheesiest grin on her face before jumping into a cover of “Eterna City.” Luckily for the fans, she later played an unreleased track titled “Wilco Type Beat,” which fittingly led to “In a Good Way,” a cheesy, love-ridden anthem for those who can’t help but cry happy tears (she wrote this one for me). Accompanying the singer and her band was Wilco guitarist, and Chicago native, Nels Cline. Cline captivated the audience with his solo which left nobody standing still, a contrasting setup for Webster’s newest hit, “Lifetime”, a complex letter to a significant other brought to life through a piano ballad.

The show's highlight comes towards the end of her set with “Cheers,” one of her more rock-influenced songs, full of both fuzzy and clean guitars and a thumping baseline that kept everyone moving. In April of 2022, Webster released an EP titled Car Therapy Sessions, which includes five songs of hers accompanied by a 24-piece orchestra, “Cheers” (known as “Cheers (To You & Me)” on the EP), being one of them. As someone who is more familiar with the Car Therapy Sessions version of the song, the full-force, punchy performance took me by surprise. Also on Car Therapy Sessions is “Jonny: Suite”, in which Webster spent the majority of the song speak-singing, desperately wondering if her partner ever loved her in the first place, the crowd reciting the monologue by heart.

After a quick jaunt offstage, the first song of her encore was “Feeling Good Today,” a tastefully autotuned unreleased song that Webster described as “a stupid little song,” a terribly relatable track that features lyrics like, “I got paid yesterday, I’ll probably buy something dumb, because I’m pretty childish” (which hit way too close to home). To round out her surprisingly short set, she performed “Kingston,” her most well-known hit, currently sitting pretty at almost 150 million streams on Spotify. The lyric, “He said, ‘baby’, that's what he called me, ‘I love you’”, acting as an aside to the singer’s story, was shouted so loud, I wouldn’t be surprised if some Madisonians heard the crowd from 150 miles away.