Hurray For The Riff Raff - LIFE ON EARTH (2022)

After a lifetime of running—away from their Bronx home as a teenager, for freight trains to travel the country, from New Orleans to Nashville and back to NYC—Alynda Segarra (aka, the force behind Hurray for the Riff Raff) was forced to sit still and look around when the pandemic all but stopped the world for a while. "Not being able to travel and get out whenever, I felt nervous energy inside me … it taught me a lot about trauma and memories being stored in the body," they said. So Segarra began running, as in jogging, to get out the energy—but also sorting through the past and figuring out how to live with it, and thrive. Nowhere is that clearer than on "SAGA," a bittersweet, Velvet Underground-like jangle inspired by Christine Blasey Ford's sexual-assault accusations against then-Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and how that led to a resurfacing of Segarra's own painful memories. "I don't want this to be the saga of my life … push it out of my mind," they rebel against a hopeful wall of horns, kittycat-cute backing vocals contrasting the chant of "Nobody believed me." (Their voice often recalls the power and silk of Annie Lennox.) You can feel Segarra's racing pulse in "PIERCED ARROWS" and a more measured pace in "WOLVES," with its mix of chilled synth, tribal drums and '80-style gospel backing vocals. It feels like a lost Yeah Yeah Yeahs song, and that's a good thing. "ROSEMARY TEARS" sounds sacred and holy, and "nightqueen" is atmospheric, the drums slowly floating in as if to pierce its bubble of keening synth. "RHODODENDRON" is great, as Segarra coos pretty plant names and makes them sound like a roll call of danger—"Rhododendron/ Night blooming jasmine/ Deadly nightshade/ Fox glove … " It bounces along like a joy-riding car without shocks, then settles into a groove just as the singer switches gears to wail their plea of a chorus: "Don't turn your back on the mainland!" It's a reference to their Puerto Rican heritage, and Segarra has said it's about admitting to the "colonizer inside us all." Finally, "PRECIOUS CARGO" is a stunner, Segarra's sing-song spoken word like documentary journalism as they speak in the voice of real-life ICE detainees. "Me swimming just to get across/ With the babies on my shoulders … Made it through the jungle/ No water there for two weeks," the story goes, detailing the hardships of being captured while seeking asylum: split from their families, sleeping on the cold floor "like a dog." Segarra helped the men work with lawyers to win their freedom but stresses that just being free in the US does not guarantee a functioning, human system.

TRACKLIST

1. WOLVES (3:37)
2. PIERCED ARROWS (4:02)
3. POINTED AT THE SUN (3:32)
4. RHODODENDRON (3:34)
5. JUPITER'S DANCE (2:35)
6. LIFE ON EARTH (5:46)
7. nightqueen (3:39)
8. PRECIOUS CARGO (4:43)
9. ROSEMARY TEARS (3:17)
10. SAGA (4:35)
11. KiN (0:50)