There are few albums I returned to as often in 2019 as Faye Webster’s Atlanta Millionaires Club. Instrumentally and conceptually, this album exists as an insulated ecosystem. It’s easy and welcoming to inhabit – the songs drift effortlessly through a satisfying narrative arc. It’s so smooth that listening to it from start to finish feels inevitable, and I was immediately carried away by its soaring saxophone and the undeniable allure of R&B keyboard and bass lines. Most tracks are also graced with melancholy pedal steel. There are self-referential moments throughout, including a reprise of “Jonny,” the tender semi-love song that is the album’s yearning heart. 

It’s almost redundant to emphasize Webster’s disregard for conventional genres; anyone who creates music post-Internet does so with access to an unprecedented catalog. That said, it’s worth mentioning Webster’s unique musical DNA, which combines elements of hip-hop, folk, and indie rock. She has been primarily understood as an Americana artist, but it’s in everyone’s best interest to give up categorizing her music, which evades categorization amazingly well. This is especially true of her most recent work. Webster’s roots in the Atlanta hip-hop scene are evident; her 2017 self-titled album was released on Awful Records, the record label and hip-hop collective of Father, an Atlanta rapper. She had previously collaborated with artists on the label as a photographer and art director. (Her other side hustle is yo-yoing. She is quite good.) 

Ultimately, Webster parted ways with Awful and released 2019’s Atlanta Millionaires Club on Secretly Canadian, her current label. The album is her most cohesive work yet, thematically and otherwise. There are nods to her past; Father features on “Flowers” and sounds right at home, a testament to Webster’s genre-bending. Sparse instrumental performances frame her tales of heartache and introspection. Even when Webster sounds lost, she insists on her right to those feelings. “Hurts Me Too” seems a mission statement for the album: Webster sings, “I am done changing words/Just so my songs sound prettier/I just don’t care if it hurts/‘Cause it hurts me too.” On her third full-length release, she has arrived at her most bracingly honest self. 

She has been primarily understood as an Americana artist, but it’s in everyone’s best interest to give up categorizing her music, which evades categorization amazingly well.

Webster’s distinctive, lilting voice inhabits the loneliness and longing of unrequited love as she sings of feeling an imbalance in affection. The lyricism is markedly uncomplicated, and nothing here is extraneous. Instead, everything is pointed and deeply felt. On “Jonny,” she openly pleads, “Jonny, did you ever love me?/Jonny, help me figure it out.” It is a subtle and expertly crafted song on an album that is full of them. Webster concludes this album with a hushed poem that invites the listener into the boring, white-walled bedroom where she pines over Jonny and eventually lets him go. Atlanta Millionaires Club makes a convincing argument for understatement and vulnerability as strengths. Armed with these, Webster created an album that is quietly tremendous.

Writer: Siena Ballotta Garman