Faye Webster brings melodic melancholia to First Avenue

Faye Webster performing at First Avenue in Minneapolis on Monday, Oct. 30, 2023. Sara Fish for MPR

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October 31, 2023

On a snowy Monday night, Faye Webster’s shivering fans wrapped around the star-studded exterior of First Avenue. Then a crowd heavy on gen-z attendees, easily identified by x-marked hands, packed into the mainroom for a performance with warmth emanating from their fevered screams of “I love you, Faye.”

Webster’s eclectic, musical upbringing with a blues guitarist grandfather and a fiddle-playing mother are ever-present in her work. (The Atlanta-born multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter was also in a rap group in high school.) So the sultry-R&B- and twangy-country-infused indie rock she creates makes a lot of sense. In the wrong hands, mashing these sounds together could feel campy or forced, but Webster’s delivery comes from a place of pure authenticity. Her raw and vulnerable lyrics explore themes of longing, unrequited affection, and the general confusing nature of mismatched love. It’s beautiful music to ache to.

A starkly contrasting opener, Atlanta-based Upchuck, amped things up for the night ahead. Soulja Boy’s “Turn My Swag On” blasted from the speakers as the members of the band emerged, bathed in red light, and launched into a song from their 2022 release, Sense Yourself, and throughout the night, they traded tracks from that and their most recent album released this past month, Bite the Hand That Feeds You.

A band performing onstage in a music venue — Atlanta band Upchuck performing at First Avenue in Minneapolis on Monday, Oct. 30, 2023.
Sara Fish for MPR

Somewhere between GEL, Turnstile, and IDLES exists Upchuck in a league of their own. Their sound leans more heavily towards melodic hardcore with a bit of sludgy metal and punk peppered throughout. With a mixed-race lineup featuring Black, Latinx, and white band members, Upchuck embodies a much-needed evolution from an overwhelmingly white and male-fronted scene. Lead singer Kalia “KT” Thompson belts out lyrics about police brutality, the experience of existing in Black and Brown bodies in America, and breaking the barriers of worn-our systems that no longer serve any of us. Joining Thompson are Michael Durham on lead guitar, Alex Hoffman on rhythm guitar, Armando Arrietta on bass, and Chris Salado on drums.

In about 45 minutes, Upchuck blitzed through 14 songs — 12 in English, and two in Spanish fronted by drummer Salado taking over on “Perdido” and “Hierba Mala.” Thompson spat out acerbic lyrics — and a bit of water into the crowd — in a powerful reverb-laden voice that engulfed the mainroom. On “Facecard,” she crooned melodically and showed off her range as Faye Webster joined them on stage to play bass. Guitarists Durham and Hoffman provided slow, grinding, and hypnotic guitar on “Boss Up” and psychedelic-adjacent noodling on “Bite the Hand That Feeds You.” The intense rhythm section featured Arrietta’s propulsive bass and menacing drum work by Salado, who was hitting his cymbal so hard that it came off the stand. With a different crowd, there would have been a circle pit. Overall, the rambunctious opening set ensured everyone was alert for Webster’s mellow and melancholic performance.

Her stage featured a scattering of large structures that looked hewn from black, cratered volcanic rock. Adding to the otherworldliness was a backdrop of Webster seemingly emerging from magma. Shortly after the curtain rose, she and Matt “Pistol” Stoessel on pedal steel; Annie Leeth on keys, strings, and saxophone; Charles Garner on drums; and “Nora” on bass kicked off the set with the recent single, “But Not Kiss.” Webster’s delicate voice rang out starkly as bursts of ascending pedal steel, piano, drum, and guitar filled the void. The crowd exploded as Webster waxed on feelings of unrequited love. "I hope you're okay, but I won't ask / If you're in a good place, I won't mess with that / But I'm here when you need, I always have."

A band performing onstage — Faye Webster performing at First Avenue in Minneapolis on Monday, Oct. 30, 2023.
Sara Fish for MPR

As spine-tingling pedal steel and tinkling chimes dazzled over a throbbing bassline and gentle percussion on “Better Distractions,” silhouettes of birds lazily flapped across the screen behind the band. The crowd grooved, with heads that were just banging moments ago for Upchuck now settled into a gentle bob. Webster sometimes sounds on the verge of tears when she sings, but her words can cut right to the heart. "I tried to eat, I tried to sleep, but everything seems boring to me / I don't know what to do," and a repeating refrain of "Will you? Will you be with me?”

This repetition, present in many of her songs, hammers home emotions of longing, ache, and rumination on relationships unreciprocated or lost. On “Right Side of My Neck,” golden sparkles rained on the screen behind the stage. Webster echoing “The right side of my neck still smells like you,” felt incredibly human in a world so frequently reduced to screen-based interactions.

But it wasn’t all sad songs. An avid Pokemon fan, Webster treated the crowd to a whimsical rendition of “Eterna City” as pixels appeared on the screen behind the band. Not the only song in the set dedicated to her interests, “A Dream of a Baseball Player” centers on her crush on Atlanta Braves star Ronald Acuña Jr. As pink light enveloped the stage, pedal steel and saxophone created a sexy R&B vibe legitimized by Webster's disarmingly tender lyrics. "How did I fall in love with someone I don't know?" she crooned as the song faded.

Webster and company closed the set with a grimier, bass-forward song, “Cheers.” Upchuck joined the band and danced alongside someone decked out in an inflatable dinosaur costume. It was a dissonant choice to perk up the crowd before the encore. Webster returned for a short vocoder-laden song about a nice day that included an exterminator, her dog, and overspending because she's — self-described as — childish. Then came the lush and hazy gut-punch “Kingston,” about the fanciful daydreaming of new love. While pedal steel and saxophone smoldered, Garner and Nora harmonized with Webster on the chorus, capping a performance that added fullness to many songs beyond their recorded versions.

A lack of audience engagement from Webster might have bored those unfamiliar with her work, but the many die-hard fans lived for each moment and opportunity to sing along. Admittedly, Upchuck was a hard act to follow. Webster swayed, bounced, and doubled her willowy body over her guitar throughout the night. All said, the whole set plus encore, including an attendee’s medical emergency, took just about an hour. Webster and her crew sounded dialed in and were well worth venturing out to see on a blustery night.

Faye Webster