Hurray for the Riff Raff

• Navigator [ATO, 2017] ***
• Life on Earth [Nonesuch, 2022] ***
• The Past Is Still Alive [Nonesuch, 2024] A-

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Navigator [ATO, 2017]
Bronx Puerto Rican emigrates to New Orleans, where she crystallizes a rock group fit to declaim her story ("Living in the City," "Pa'lante," "Rican Beach") ***

Life on Earth [Nonesuch, 2022]
"Go run away you darling/Run to some distant shore/Because it's not safe at home anymore/It's not safe at home anymore" ("Precious Cargo," "Rhododendron") ***

The Past Is Still Alive [Nonesuch, 2024]
I only started listening to Bronx-raised Alynda Segarra's so-called Americana in 2017, a decade and six albums into their band's career, so I can't swear this autobiographical lookback is their best work. But I can say that it's the most fetchingly songful of the band's three albums in that span and that although our lifepaths were very different, it brought back my 15,000-mile hitchhiking trek of 50 years earlier, not in its details—my adventures were devoid of both sex and alcohol—but its exploratory mood. Its lyrics evoke and embody the kind of retrospectively narrative mood you seldom encounter in such projects. And for that reason alone it stands out. A-