Hurray For The Riff Raff

From an outsider's perspective, there's an intrinsically American mood to the music Hurray for the Riff Raff makes - it's full of wide-eyed hope and a heavy-hearted solemnity that juxtaposes entrancingly in every folk-leaning slid chord, evoking dusty plains at dusk, with the sun twinkling its last.

'The Past Is Still Alive' brings the focus back inwards, with arrangements that are raw, melodies direct and indelible, and lyrics that are personal yet largely rooted in family and community. There are love songs to real characters, locations and mythic figures like Sky Red Hawk (‘Buffalo’); the first trans woman Segarra ever met (‘Hawkmoon’); queerness and sacred spaces for outsiders and the vulnerable, in the aftermath of the Club Q shooting (‘Colossus of Roads’); leaving home behind and discovering oneself on the edge of the world (‘Snake Plant’); and short-lived romances and the wisdom gained through chaos (‘Vetiver’). Elsewhere, in the self-portraits painted on first single ‘Alibi’, ‘Ogallala’, and other album highlights, Segarra reflects on the land they have traveled, the hardships witnessed, and bravery gained while running away from everything and everyone they knew at age seventeen, hopping freight trains and hitchhiking across the country with a band of street urchins.