Hurray for the Riff Raff sings of wandering the nation, and discovering a “conflict on the individuals.”
The open highway is the nice American literary system. Whether or not the instance is Jack Kerouac or Tracy Chapman, the nationwide canon is filled with journey tales that observe America’s idiosyncrasies and inequalities, its darkish corners and misplaced wanderers, however in the end seize the hope that a greater life is on the finish of a protracted drive.
Top-of-the-line new albums of this yr joins that custom but in addition diverges from it, proper right down to the mode of transportation that it focuses on. At age 17, the singer-songwriter Alynda Segarra left their residence within the Bronx and began hitching rides on freight trains. They finally settled in New Orleans and rose to grow to be one of the outstanding voices of the Americana scene, recording below the identify Hurray for the Riff Raff. Now, on their ninth album, The Previous Is Nonetheless Alive, the 36-year-old Segarra revisits reminiscences of their youth to attract a subversive—and heartbreaking—map of the nation.
Segarra’s voice has smooth edges however a tough heart, befitting songs by which outrage and ache simmer beneath the pastoral. They’re greatest recognized for the 2017 album The Navigator, an operatic story cycle impressed by Segarra’s Nuyorican heritage. Extra lately, 2022’s Life on Earth was marketed as a piece of “nature punk,” mourning local weather change in new-wave anthems. The Previous Is Nonetheless Alive isn’t fairly so conceptual as these releases, but it surely gives a reminder that memoir—theoretically an individualistic train—can convey a panoramic sense of locations and peoples.
The songs collage collectively scenes and observations amid country-rock preparations that glimmer with reverb and have free, lassoing guitar solos. Segarra mentions New York Metropolis streets, Florida swamps, and southwestern pueblos, and colours them with sense reminiscences: a childhood picture of “feeding grapefruits to the cows,” a dive-bar recollection of “kissing at nighttime, you already know the sensation.” Characters emerge in equally evocative sketches. Touring as a teen, Segarra fell in with a “barrel of freaks” for whom wandering was survival: “I’m so completely happy that we escaped from the place we got here,” Segarra sings.
The temper of those songs is mystical and looking out, however with an undercurrent of grief. We meet a buddy known as Miss Jonathan, who has holes in her fishnet tights; she will get overwhelmed on the street and is rarely seen once more. On “Snake Plant,” Segarra addresses the fentanyl disaster: “Most of our outdated pals are lifeless,” they sing, including, “There’s a conflict on the individuals / What don’t you perceive?” “Hourglass” chronicles Segarra’s discomfort at some gathering of yuppie sorts. “I at all times really feel like a unclean child,” goes one line. “I used to eat out of the rubbish.”
As these lyrics recommend, Segarra is making a category critique about the way in which that our society grinds down on the susceptible. However the message is generally conveyed calmly, woven by interpersonal tales. On the extraordinary opener, “Alibi,” Segarra negotiates with a buddy who appears bent on self-destruction. The lyrics are formed by habit restoration and suicide-prevention greatest practices—urging the buddy to simply take it day-to-day—however the language is informal and heat. “Play one other hand,” Segarra suggests to the buddy. “Perhaps we’ll begin a band.”
The place did the rails take Segarra ultimately? Self-actualization, achievement, liberation? Nothing so triumphant, at the least based on what’s on the album. For all of the surprise Segarra conveys, it is a story about radical disenchantment: “Say goodbye to America / I wanna see it dissolve,” they sing, in a tone of trembling willpower, on “Colossus of Roads.” After 9 mild, unimposing tracks, the music crescendos noisily on the ultimate correct music, “Ogallala.” Segarra sings of watching the world burn, after which they sing of ready round in a backyard—settled, at peace, in some new land.
