The ALBUM Section: February 2024
In the listening room with the latest from Hurray for the Riff Raff and Mary Timony
All things considered, it was a sparse month in terms of quantity.
But there was some good stuff at the top, including Laura Jane Grace’s Hole In My Head, her strongest solo effort to date.
Chelsea Wolfe’s deep She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She is also very strong and well worth checking out.
But here in the Album Section, we are looking at two other strong releases, from Hurray for the Riff Raff and Mary Timony.
The best album of the month belongs to Alynda Segarra. It began as a look at their past, but a more current event made it cut a completely different way.
Segarra, who records as Hurray for the Riff Raff, had come up with songs inspired both by their early teen years in turn of the century New York City and by their itinerant life hitchhiking and catching unpaid train rides a few years later, until they wound up in New Orleans at 18.
Then Segarra’s father, Jose Enrico “Quico” Segarra passed away not long before they were scheduled to go into the studio to record the album.
Artist: Hurray for the Riff Raff
Album: The Past Is Still Alive
Label: Nonesuch Records
★★★★3/4 (4.75/5 stars)
“My father was a really big inspiration to me,” Segarra told NPR. “He’s always been kind of a part of the band — I had him on an album cover, I had him in my music video for the song ‘Pa’lante’ — so going into the studio and still being in the early stages of understanding that he was gone was very intense. It made me express the songs differently. I didn’t have as much energy for my neurotic brain, my brain that was full of self-doubt or wanted to be a control freak. Instead, it was a lot of reactivity: ‘I like this,’ ‘I don’t like this.'”
Doubt had crept into Segarra’s life, with the challenges of trying to be a working musician in an environment where album sales have become an ever-shrinking part of the equation. The long period between the release of 2017’s The Navigator and 2022’s Life on Earth exacerbated that. Throw in their feeling that social media scrutiny can run rampant. It all began to feel overwhelming.
Segarra’s friends provided comfort, getting them into a space where they could create what became The Past Is Still Alive.
“I wrote this record very much in this mindset of, what if I were to just write as if it’s just me and my friends in a living room and not put all these pressures on myself?” they told Vogue. “And I also felt that if I’m too sensitive for this job, then I might as well go out being honest and vulnerable because, why not. I started writing because I am sensitive and care about the world.”
While grief informs the album, it’s not just in the linear thinking of being sad over losing a parent. It was in how they were able to crystallize where they were going in their mind. Also at that point, there was that bit of freedom in a “I’m experiencing the worst. I can handle anything else” kind of way.
The Lower East Side Segarra explored just out of grade school is one where drugs like heroin were just as plentiful as today, only sold more openly. They saw people, talented ones, avail themselves of the products to feed their addictions.
“My dad was a Vietnam vet, so he told me a lot about the struggles that people at the VA were dealing with,” Segarra told NPR. “He was so real with me about that whole experience, so I understood that this would be something these young kids were going to deal with for maybe their whole life, and it formed a lot of my worldview, seeing these really brilliant people that I thought were not disposable.”
Even as important as those people can be, there’s only so much that can be done, as the moving opener “Alibi” realizes.
VIDEO: Hurray for the Riff Raff “Alibi”
Segarra opens the song singing “You don’t have to die if you don’t wanna die/You can take it all back in the nick of time/Maybe even be a good friend of mine.” But by the end, they’re singing. “‘Cause you don’t have to die if you don’t wanna die/Maybe I got something left that is worth a try/But I’m not gonna be your alibi/This time.”
It’s not as if Hurray for the Riff Raff has a history of being vague on record, but they’re at their most autobiographical here.
“Snake Plant (The Past is Still Alive)” is full of those details of Segarra’s past, when they relied on their wits and the help of other similar young souls off the grid: “Pee in the bushes while I wait for a train/Under the bridge when it starts to rain/I never got to ride the sunset route/But I drank enough, a hundred proof/Campfire on the superfund site/Garbage island fucking in the moonlight.”
By the third verse, Segarra has their feet in the present, thinking of today’s addicts (“So, test your drugs, remember Narcan/There’s a war on the people, what don’t you understand?/There’s fentanyl in everything/Don’t become an angel with a broken wing”).
As a reminder of one of the empathy their father imparted on them, Segarra intends to have Narcan available at all the shows on their upcoming tour.
Musically, Segarra teams up with a core band of brothers Brad (who produced) and Phil Cook (both part of Megafaun back in the day) and drummer Yan Westerlund. Combined with others like Hand Habits guitarist Meg Duffy, who appears on four songs, they doesn’t exactly retreat to her late ’00s/early ’10s sound. But they definitely play up the folk more, fully integrated with country and rock, melodically so.
“Colossus of Roads” mentions the real-life person in the title (the late Russell Butler, who maintained a lifelong job as a railroad switchman with being a foremost train graffiti artist). He gets the shoutout right after poet Eileen Myles in a song of love in dangerous circumstances that shouldn’t be, with the music lightly evoking a starlit night.
The song is inspired by the Club Q mass shooting in Colorado Springs in November, 2022. It doesn’t feel any less relevant now, in a country where the death of bullied teen Nex Benedict, who was non-binary like Segarra, has a state senator calling people like them “filth” and a social media influencer using their death to call for eradicating trans people.
The backing on the moving “Hawkmoon” sounds more like the soundtrack if Segarra had skipped the trains and hit the open road in an old beater she’d picked up for cheap. Here, that trip goes down memory lane, as Segarra recalls the first trans woman they ever met, when they first wound up in New Orleans (where they’d start their music career).
“Miss Jonathan was a German rapper, poet and train-riding crusty homeless kid who loved to wear the skimpiest outfits she could get away with and was a surprisingly great shoplifter,” Segarra said in a statement. “We became best friends for a winter, before I learned to play music in New Orleans, and I would ride shotgun in her beat up car and search for abandoned houses to sleep in.”
Segarra still thinks of their friend, who they’ve lost touch with, a woman who endured violence. The time together cracked the door open for Segarra to come to terms with their gender years later. As the song goes, “And you’ll never know the way I miss Ms. Jonathan/She was beaten in the street and then I never saw her again/She opened up my mind in the holes of her fishnet tights.”
They channel their inner Lucinda Williams on “Vetiver” as memories (the kisses, being together at Stonewall, riding in the back of a pickup) flood back to the point where the invokes the title phrase.
Greater losses, both historical and realistically possible, permeate the album as well. They touch on the latter with lines like “Say goodbye to America/I wanna see it dissolve” from “Hawkmoon.”
VIDEO: Hurray for the Riff Raff “Hawkmoon”
“Buffalo” ties the frontier past to the present, from the lost species and decimated buffalo population to delivering another pointed namecheck in Lakota artist Sky Redhawk. Segarra’s light touch keeps it from heavy sledding, with that chorus hook guaranteed to land in the brain.
The Past Is Still Alive is given space to breathe. “Hourglass” is both a languid love song and about wrestling with the doubts they’d been feeling about their career.
The slowed-down waltz of “The World is Dangerous” is a study in the power of restraint. Well-placed fiddles and guest Conor Oberst’s backing vocals add to the air of hopeful melancholy in the lyrics about clinging to the possibility of putting broken love back together again.
Segarra brings it all home on “Ogallala,” a song named for a Nebraska town off Interstate 80, the town itself named for a Lakota subtribe. Past and present meet at a point where Segarra’s doubts are less about themself than the world around them (“You know that scene at the end of “Titanic”?/Well I’m the one who’s still playing on the deck”)
At first, the music sounds as if it’s a dry day, with a need to pull off U.S. 30 to get something to quench your thirst, with pedal steel rolling in from the distance. Then the choral vocals, dissonant horns and keyboard atmosphere comes in as the song swells, acting like a cleansing rain.
It’s a perfect closer, but Segarra lets their father have the last word with “Kiko Forever,” a short coda of him leaving voicemails that sound like so many loving dads, backed by his own piano playing.
Segarra’s great leap forward was The Navigator, in which they expanded their musical palette while engaging in the power of their Puerto Rican heritage in an entertaining and moving way.
The Past Is Still Alive, a consolidation of all their strengths, is keenly written, strongly performed and feels just as profound. It might just be Hurray for the Riff Raff’s best album yet.
As Segarra sings on “Ogallala”: “I used to think I was born into the wrong generation/But now I know I made it right on time.” It’s hard to disagree with them.
Hurray for the Riff Raff isn’t the only artist with a new album created through sadness and grief.
Mary Timony’s first solo album in 17 years was put together while she also had to be a caregiver.
Her father was diagnosed with cancer, then dementia. On the heels of that, her mother was also diagnosed with cancer.
“My dad passed away right when I started recording the record,” Timony told Louder Than War. “My mom got increasingly sick as I was recording it, and then my mom died at the end of the record. But I don’t look back on it other than being grateful for that time with them. It was so stressful, it was insane…but I really loved it in a way because I got so much closer to them, my dad and mom.”
Artist: Mary Timony
Album: Untame the Tiger
Label: Merge Records
★★★★1/4 (4.25/5 stars)
Serendipity led to Dave Mattacks, whose long career includes two stints as Fairport Convention’s drummer, appearing on the album. Joe Wong, who co-produced the album with Timony and bassist Kane, had recently interviewed Mattacks on his The Trap Set podcast. Wong suggested Timony ask Mattacks to play on Untame the Tiger. Thinking he wouldn’t be interested, she initially demurred, before changing her mind.
“And then I sat on it for like a month and then suddenly I was like, ‘What the hell? Why would I not do that?'” she told Stereogum. “So Joe called him up and within an hour, we’re planning it all out. He was so cool to work with and such an incredible drummer and such a nice guy. It was really a dream come true for me. Probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in my life was play with him.”
Of course, Timony hasn’t exactly been living in a cave the last couple decades. She was part of the all-too-short lived supergroup Wild Flag and has been part of Ex Hex, which has put out a couple of enjoyable albums.
But here, she gets to stretch out a little, not having to hew to any band dynamics. The result is a showcase for her skills as a songwriter and guitarist.
The title track is one example. It begins with pastoral folk, of the kind that would have heralded Zeppelinesque thunder or proggy explorations of any number of ’70s. But here, it leads to sprightly guitar pop that juxtaposes with its sad lyrics (“What do I get from loving you/Just this song about pain.”
VIDEO: Mary Timony “Dominoes”
“Dominoes” was a late addition to the album that became its lead single. It’s a scalpel-sharp breakup song that manages to offer a note of grace at the end. Its indie craft sounds like it could have come out soundings fresh 30 years ago as it does now.
Timony’s guitar skills remained deservedly respected by those who know, but unheralded by the mass audience. More’s the pity, because Untame The Tiger is a showcase for her playing style — assertive while always serving the song, melodic with playful twists, versatile and able to make the complex sound simple.
“Summer” packs some wank-free guitar heroics in under three minutes, a knottily tuneful song that would have fit onto Wild Flag while flirting with hints of the fantastical found in her early solo work.
Timony described exactly who “The Guest”, saying, “I was imagining loneliness as a house guest who keeps knocking on your door. I thought it would be funny to say loneliness is the only one who always comes back.”
She opens the song with a bit of twang, suggesting a clear night in Arizona or New Mexico where fatigue is the mood in charge.
VIDEO: Mary Timony “The Guest”
“Don’t Disappear” could certainly be informed by what Timony went through with the loss of her parents, or the end of a 16-year-long relationship, for that matter. But the song isn’t an essay in grief, but rather throwing out a lifeline (“If you fall, don’t be afraid/I’ve got you in my rain parade/If you’re close to the edge of that emotion/Come on, fall back into my devotion).
Timony rides a psychedelic groove in “Looking For The Sun” with backing harmonies, showing flavors of her early work. Whereas the Meat Puppets of 40 years ago might have mined this turf for something more freaked out, Timony comes across more blissful.
“The Dream” plays like an album closer with its building sense of atmosphere, leading up to Timony repeating “I don’t wanna undream a dream” with multi-tracked vocals and backing at first phased, then becoming more dominant in the mix.
“Not the Only One” was the choice to end the album, bringing a note of hope to conclude the proceedings in folk rock glory.
Indeed, for all the things Timony went through before and during the album, Untame the Tiger is not burdened with heaviness. The sadness and grief are there, but there are moments of light, as if Timony didn’t put a check on those emotions.
It’s all put together in a batch of nine songs where you can hear a connection to her prior work, from the 90s through Ex Hex, without sounding as if she’s going through the numbers. Even the longer songs sound tight with Timony, Kane, Mattacks and Dave Christian, the other drummer on the album, locked in and the occasional string backing not detracting a bit.
Untame the Tiger also sounds quite good. Even the distortion on “Dominoes” doesn’t hurt, as it’s a deliberate choice that accents its mood and isn’t slathered over the rest of the album.
In a recent Reddit AMA, Timony talked about her creative process, saying, “I try to think of creative time as a time when a person’s brain acts like a radio receiving sounds from somewhere. it’s almost like dreaming. If i can get to that place, out of the way, and just listen, then usually the ideas are okay. If I try too hard to make it work usually the ideas are crap.”
Judging by Untame the Tiger, she had that internal radio very well tuned in. It’s yet another strong entry in her esteemed discography.
- Stevie Wonder’s Declaration of Independence - September 30, 2026
- Tomorrow Never Knows: The Beatles’ Revolver Turns 60 - July 20, 2026
- Here Today: The Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’ at 60 - May 16, 2026
You May Also Like
-
January 31, 2024 -
November 28, 2023 -
January 21, 2021
