Atlanta native
Faye Webster is a multi-faceted artist. While still in her early teens, she was writing perky indie country tunes while also collaborating with
PSA, a collective of mostly rap artists
Webster would sometimes lend her vocal talents to. As her music career was taking shape, she was also growing as a photographer, noted for her portraits of Atlanta rap royalty. Her self-titled 2017 album was a more playful reading of her earlier Americana, released on the iconoclastic Atlanta label
Awful Records.
Atlanta Millionaires Club finds
Webster growing into her multi-dimensionality, embracing her love of both organic R&B and earthy indie in songs more vulnerable and direct than she has delivered before. The album opens with a swell of pedal steel guitar, one of
Webster's pet sounds. The song it graces, "Room Temperature," is more of a languid take on girl group melancholia than country, and its lazy shuffle is marked by a lovesick
Webster lamenting she "should get out more" to get over a lingering heartache. Much of
Atlanta Millionaires Club has this same humid character, perhaps informed by the environment
Webster calls home. "Kingston" shimmers in a middle ground between R&B and heartbroken indie pop, electric piano and steadfast drums moving at a snail's pace toward a chorus of lush horns and harmony vocals. Upbeat moments like "The Right Side of My Neck" embody the feeling of a giddy late-summer crush, while "Johnny" represents the opposite end of those feelings, languishing in a woozy, upset version of lovesickness.
Webster hops genres more dramatically in the album's second half. "Come to Atlanta" rides a neo-soul backbeat, and multi-tracked vocals dance around in an arrangement with flutes and strings. "What Used to Be" is a sad country waltz that quickly switches gears into "Flowers," a minimal hunk of ghostly R&B complete with the electronic drums and a lengthy feature of verses from
Awful Records founder
Father. In another context, jumping from dusty folk to booming R&B might feel jarring, but
Webster's versatile personality is the core of
Atlanta Millionaires Club, and the entire album flows through its changes as naturally and pleasantly as a cool breeze in the depths of summer. ~ Fred Thomas
