Faye Webster – I Know I’m Funny Haha (Vinyl LP)

Faye Webster loves the feeling of a first take: writing a song, then heading to the studio with her band to track it live the very next day. When you listen to the 23-year-old Atlanta songwriter’s poised and plainspoken albums, you can hear why: she channels emotions that are so aching, they seem to be coming into existence at that very moment. Webster captures the spark before it has a chance to fade; she inks lyrics before they have a chance to seem fleeting. Her signature sound pairs close, whisper-quiet, home-recorded vocals with the unmistakable sound of musicians together in a room. I Know I’m Funny Haha is Webster’s most realized manifestation yet of this emotional and musical alchemy. Continuing to bloom from her 2019 breakthrough and Secretly Canadian debut Atlanta Millionaires Club, Webster’s sound draws as much from the lap-steel singer-songwriter pop of the 1970s and teardrop country tunes as it does from the audacious personalities of her city’s rap and R&B community, where she first found a home on Awful Records.

The album began for Webster with the stirring ballad “In a Good Way,” as in “You make me want to cry in a good way” – an instant-classic Faye Webster one-liner. It’s beguilingly simple, the kind of melody and arrangement that seem to have existed forever. A sense of relief charges the neo-psychedelic pop of “Cheers,” where Webster experiments with an overdriven guitar tone. She also collaborated, on “Overslept,” with the Japanese artist Mei Ehara, who she calls the biggest influence on her new music. “A Dream About a Baseball Player” is Webster’s oldest song on the record, a snapshot of her one-time teenage crush on Atlanta Braves outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. – who she actually met when she was invited to sing at a Braves game in 2019. The song is no doubt a testament to I Know I’m Funny Haha’s brilliantly colloquial title. But more than humor, Webster’s music is full of personality.

1. Better Distractions
2. Sometimes
3. I Know I’m Funny haha
4. In A Good Way
5. Kind Of
6. Cheers
7. Both All The Time
8. A Stranger
9. A Dream with a Baseball Player
10. Overslept (feat. Mei Ehara)
11. Half of Me