It’s an accidentally perfect moment for Faye Webster’s Georgia peach of a third album. Just weeks after Lil Nas X’s roots’n’rap chart-topper Old Town Road sparked a debate in the US music press about what country music could be, Atlanta Millionaires Club nails the perfect balance of the singer-songwriter’s sleepy, intimate balladry with the rich musical history of her home city.
Come to Atlanta is a musical tourist board ad, with bright soul horns and shuffling hip-hop rhythms; Pigeon confides anxious thoughts through funky R&B harmonies with sweetly keening slide guitar, and Kingston luxuriates between dreamy R&B and sunkissed soft rock. Her fellow Atlantan, rapper Father, pops up for a guest verse on the shimmery, Aaliyah-inspired R&B of Flowers – they’re old friends, and Webster was herself part of a rap collective.
Compared with the straighter indie-country of her 2013 debut Run & Tell, Webster’s songs benefit from allowing in other voices and sounds, but the fusion never feels forced or false – she’s still completely herself on the likes of the sweetly gawky Room Temperature, with its refrain of “I should get out more”. Being a homebird seems to suit her just fine.
