Hurray for the Riff Raff Offers Paean For Queerness, Shares Adventures From America's Outskirts on Two New Singles
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Today, with the release of two new singles and remarkable feats of songwriting, Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra, they/them) reveals more of the profound reflections and personal stories that are bound inside The Past Is Still Alive. Out February 23rd on Nonesuch, the forthcoming album has been hailed as one of 2024's most anticipated releases by the Wall Street Journal, Guardian, NPR Music, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and more, as Alynda Segarra surmounts several lives' worth of pain, chaos and trauma with a sense of wonder, want and wanderlust. On the devastating yet deeply inspiring "Colossus of Roads," written in one tearful sitting during the aftermath of the Club Q shooting, they share a love song for the queer, the vulnerable and the dispossessed. As Segarra calls to idols like poet Eileen Myles and boxcar artist buZ blurr, the song offers a tribute to outsider culture, and the collective fight to survive and thrive in spite of violence.
"Colossus of Roads" arrives alongside "Snake Plant (The Past Is Still Alive)," Hurray for the Riff Raff's "memoiristic showstopper" (Rolling Stone). A memory box presented in the form of a sweeping song, Alynda Segarra revisits formative moments and childhood trips with family, as well as the community, grief and passion they discovered when they decided to leave it all behind and never stop running. Peeing in the bushes while they wait to hop a freight train, lighting campfires on superfund sites, making moonlit love on an island of trash, shoplifting for food and playing music with a barrel of freaks – their itinerant adventures serve as a reminder that there are always other ways to live, underlined by an urgent demand: "TEST YOUR DRUGS, REMEMBER NARCAN. There's a war on the people, what don't you understand?"
Watch the videos for "Colossus of Roads" & "Snake Plant (The Past Is Still Alive),"
and read the songs' lyrics at Oxford American
"I've only had this experience a couple of times, where a song falls on me—it's all there, and I don't do anything. Writing 'Colossus of Roads' felt like creating a space where all us outsiders can be safe together. That doesn't exist, but it exists in our minds, and it exists in this song – this one is sacred to me. I've also always wanted to make my version of Bob Dylan's 'I Was Young When I Left Home,' and 'Snake Plant (The Past Is Still Alive)' is it." -Alynda Segarra/Hurray for the Riff Raff
Produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Kevin Morby, Waxahatchee), and recorded in Durham, NC just a month after the passing of Alynda Segarra's father, The Past Is Still Alivegrapples with time, memory, love and loss, and marks the most magnetic Hurray for the Riff Raff album to date. "Colossus of Roads" and "Snake Plant (The Past Is Still Alive)" follow lead single "Alibi," a reckoning with addiction set in NYC's Lower East Side, and a pleading effort to get through to a loved one who might already be gone. On the rest of The Past Is Still Alive, the Bronx-born, New Orleans-based Segarra takes listeners on a journey to the people, places and phases that have made them a pan-everything fixture of the modern folk movement, with an indelible collection of lyrics, melodies and arrangements that together reset the terms of modern folk-rock. The album brings a liberating new beginning in Segarra's lauded, singular evolution as a storyteller, while also widening their cast of collaborators to include Anjimile, Conor Oberst, Meg Duffy, MikeMogis, Phil Cook, S.G. Goodman and more across the 11 tracks.
A vast world continues to be formed as Alynda Segarra uses The Past Is Still Alive to finally tell the story of their life so far. Earlier this week they previewed the album in a special event at NYC's historic St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, featuring poetry readings from Amelia Jackie, Cookie Hagendorf, and Sadie Dupuis (of Speedy Ortiz), an intimate performance and more in partnership with Poetry Project. On February 21st, Segarra will receive The People's Voice Award at Folk Alliance International's 2024 International Folk Music Awards, and on February 25th they will begin to showcase the music of The Past Is Still Alive on a spring tour of dozens of shows throughout the US, UK and EU. In partnership with PLUS1, $1 per ticket will support This Must Be The Placeand their work to distribute Naloxone - the lifesaving medicine that reverses an overdose, and will be available for free at every Hurray for the Riff Raff tour stop. Find the full list of shows below and tickets at hurrayfortheriffraff.com/tour.
Pre-Order The Past Is Still Alive Here
Hurray for the Riff Raff Tour Dates
1/31 - Boulder, CO - eTown Hall
2/25 - New Orleans, LA - Tipitina's*
2/27 - Atlanta, GA - Masquerade (Hell Stage)*
2/28 - Durham, NC - Motorco Music Hall*
2/29 - Washington, DC - Atlantis*
3/1 - Philadelphia, PA - Foundry*
3/3 - Woodstock, NY - Levon Helm Studios*
3/5 - Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg*
3/6 - Boston, MA - Sinclair*
3/9 - Burlington, VT - Higher Ground*
3/10 - Toronto, ON - Great Hall*
3/12 - Columbus, OH - Skully's*
3/14 - Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall*
3/15 - Saint Paul, MN - Amsterdam Bar & Hall*
3/22 - Knoxville, TN - Big Ears Festival
3/28 - Portland, OR - Aladdin Theater^
3/30 - Seattle, WA - Neumos^
4/1 - San Francisco, CA - August Hall^
4/2 - Sacramento, CA - Harlow's^
4/4 - San Diego, CA - Voodoo Room^
4/5 - Los Angeles, CA - Belasco^
4/6 - Pioneertown, CA - Pappy & Harriet's^
4/7 - Phoenix, AZ - Valley Bar^
4/9 - Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge^
4/10 - Denver, CO - Larimer Lounge^
4/12 - Fort Worth, TX - Tulips^
4/13 - Austin, TX - 3TEN^
4/14 - Houston, TX - White Oak Music Hall^
5/10 - Dublin, IE - Button Factory
5/11 - Manchester, UK - Deaf Institute
5/12 - Glasgow, UK - Mono
5/14 - Leeds, UK - Brudenell Social Club
5/15 - Birmingham, UK - Castle & Falcon
5/16 - Bristol, UK - Strange Brew
5/17 - London, UK - Electric Brixton
5/19 - Paris, FR - La Maroquinerie
5/20 - Brussels, BE - Botanique
5/21 - Amsterdam, NE - Tolhuistuin
5/23 - Berlin, DE - Privatclub
5/25 - Madrid, ES - Tomavistas Festival
*w/ NNAMDÏ
^w/ Sen Morimoto
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