Hurray For The Riff Raff - The Navigator (Album Review)
Monday, 20 March 2017
Written by Simon Ramsay
“Now all the politicians, they just squawk their mouths, they said: ‘We’ll build a wall to keep them out.' And all the poets were dying of a silence disease, so it happened quickly and with much ease.” Mounting an artistic resistance against those who seek to trample over basic social liberties, Alynda Segarra and Hurray For The Riff Raff have arrived with one of the most lyrically resonant and musically splendid records of 2017.
Described as a concept album set in an imaginary dystopian city that’s been blitzed by merciless gentrification, ‘The Navigator’ is a socio-political allegory that warns of a future where cultural diversity has been bulldozed from existence.
The story follows a 17-year-old Puerto Rican girl named Navita, who gradually discovers the beauty of her culture and strength that inherited communal bond offers, having earlier rejected it.
Segarra, who is of Puerto Rican descent and grew up in the Bronx, is an extremely sharp polemical songsmith who makes the personal universal, flooding the record with her own experiences of discovery as she strove to reconcile ideas of self and communal heritage in a modern world.
The complex nuances of that internal conflict are depicted in a way that’s relatable to anyone who’s ever felt alienated and unsure of their place in society. Those sentiments are played out over a deliciously accessible musical background courtesy of a brand new line-up who flesh out Segarra’s vision in some style. Gone is the folky bluegrass and Americana of albums past, replaced by a genre-busting array of flavours that elevate the emotional core of each song while boasting an infectious tunefulness.
To depict the specious unpleasantness of urban existence, Living In The City fuses Lou Reed rock ‘n’ roll grit with the outsider attitude of Chrissie Hynde. The isolation of Hungry Ghost, meanwhile, offers cool, detached synths with a spiky Joy Division-meets-PJ Harvey feel and, when Navita is spiralling on the country strains of Life To Save, there’s an inebriated quality to its woozy saloon piano.
From doo wop and gospel singers to polyrhythmic percussion, a wealth of cultural influences fittingly seep into these songs. There are Afro-Cuban rhythms on Rican Beach, a track that finds Navita’s people left to die as dissonant guitar strikes capture their displacement. Nothing’s Gonna Change That Girl has a wonderful Latin spirit to its climax and the title track – where the album’s spiritual guiding force emerges – oozes dreamy, mysterious cinematic orchestration beneath Segarra’s mellifluous alto.
The undoubted highlight, though, is protest song extraordinaire Pa’lante. From stark pronouncements about living a programmed life, the song segues into a bopping Beatles mid-section before words from Pedro Pietri’s seminal poem Puerto Rican Obituary incite Segarra to action. She unleashes a passionate rallying cry punctuated by relentless fist-pumping shouts of ‘Pa’lante’. The word powerful doesn’t do it justice.
Perhaps the most fitting element of ‘The Navigator’ is how the record mirrors its own narrative, offering a varied and inclusive mixture of music and message that will appeal to a wide range of cultures, classes and musical persuasions. Whether such a sonic protest can make a meaningful impact in 2017 is debatable, but at a time when America’s culturally diverse landscape is in danger of being rewritten before our very eyes, be thankful that Segarra is fighting back.
Hurray for the Riff Raff Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Mon March 20 2017 - LEEDS Brudenell Social Club
Tue March 21 2017 - MANCHESTER Gorilla
Wed March 22 2017 - LONDON Dome, Tufnell Park
Thu March 23 2017 - WINCHESTER Railway Inn
Sat March 25 2017 - BRIGHTON Coalition
Tue October 17 2017 - LONDON KOKO
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