“Alibi,” the opening track of Hurray for the Riff Raff’s The Past Is Still Alive, embraces the sense of invincibility that comes from facing down the very worst that life can throw at you. “You don’t have to die if you don’t wanna die/You can take it all back in the nick of time,” Alynda Segarra sings. The arrangement, featuring organ and bursts of tambourine, imbues the song with a sense of resilience and liberation—a relentlessly forward-moving spirit that recalls the music of Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, and Waxahatchee.
The rest of The Past Is Still Alive is likewise informed by recollections of both a friend’s addiction and the passing of Segarra’s father, charting a determined, if sometimes uneasy, journey to make peace with uncomfortable truths. “Snake Plant” alternates between pleasantly mundane memories to direct addresses to a friend battling addiction (“I know that you were living in hell”) and offers the closest thing the album gets to a revolutionary call to arms (“There’s a war on the people/What don’t you understand?”).
Segarra’s rich, evocative, and urgent storytelling embodies the old maxim that the personal is political. Hurray for the Riff Raff’s 2017 concept album The Navigator, released around the time Donald Trump was attempting to enact both a Muslim ban and a border wall, revolved around a narrative about a Puerto Rican runaway. Here, Segarra drops the alter ego that they adopted for that album and delivers a stinging, intimate admission from their past: “I always feel like a dirty kid/I used to eat out of the garbage/I know I should prolly get over it/But somehow it feels I’m still in it.” It’s a startling confession that weighs heavily throughout the rest of the album.
Despite confronting such daunting themes as grief, addiction, and identity, The Past Is Still Alive rarely feels heavy. Much of this owes to Segarra’s reliably triumphant outlook in the face of adversity: “This year tried to kill us, baby/Well, good luck trying/You can’t catch me,” they triumphantly declare on “Buffalo.” Credit also goes to producer and co-engineer Brad Cook, who helps couch Segarra’s words in unfussy Americana that’s easy on the ear.
Segarra has said that they wished they’d been born in a different era, and they have a personal revelation of sorts on the closing track, “Ogallala”: “Now I know/I made it right in time/To watch the world burn…with a tear in my eye”). Comparing themselves to the musicians playing on the deck of the Titanic, Segarra doesn’t offer solutions to society’s ills so much as they paint a devastatingly vivid portrait of what it’s like to watch the world disappear before your eyes.
In contrast to the sublimely minimalist arrangements that define much of The Past Is Still Alive, “Ogallala” reaches a fantastical and cathartic crescendo of tambourine, sax, drums, and guitar. It would be a stretch to call the song uplifting in any shape or form, but if the world as we know it is on its way out, you’d be hard pressed to find a better soundtrack for its demise.
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