Shina Williams & His African Percussions
Shina Williams

Hurray for the Riff Raff release Small Town Heroes, its debut for ATO Records. The album features frontwoman Alynda Lee Segarra - who settled in New Orleans after leaving her native Bronx at age 17- with twelve new, original songs all written or co-written by Segarra, with support from a vivid cast of Crescent City musicians. Hurray for the Riff Raff 'sweeps across eras and genres with grace and grit,' never more so than on 'Small Town Heroes.' On the hedonist country lament 'I Know It's Wrong (But That's Alright)' Segarra sings to a forbidden love "I'll feed you watermelon off the vine," while on 'The Body Electric' she exposes the misogyny of the traditional murder ballad, and warns "Delia's gone, but I'm settling the score." Ultimately though, many of the songs embody that most magical and fated of American cities, New Orleans. Segarra bears witness to a wave of violence that struck the St. Roch neighbourhood in 'St. Roch Blues;' yearns for a night at BJ's Bar in the Bywater in 'Crash on the Highway;' and sings of her own Lower Ninth Ward home in 'End of the Line.'

Hurray for the Riff Raff's latest album The Navigator is the follow up to the landmark 2014 release Small Town Heroes on ATO Records. It's a concept album largely about gentrification and its protagonist's navigation of "her gender identity, her sexual identity, class, and race and culture and everything" as her community begins to disappear. Like a song-cycle from an imaginary Off-Broadway musical, The Navigator rises from the ashes of loneliness and striving, honky tonks and long walks by the river of urban dreams. From the wistful melancholy of Life to Save, to the stubborn resignation of Nothing’s Gonna Change That Girl, Segarra’s voice speaks with a husky weariness that coexists with a naïve curiosity. It’s the voice of a rebel who wanted everyone to think she was so tough, and nobody could take her down, but at the same time was yearning for love and magic, some kind of an awakening. With its 12 tracks and its Travelers, Sages, and Sirens, The Navigator comes straight at you from the intersection of apocalypse and hope. This album rides Patti Smith’s high horse while straddling Chrissie Hynde’s thin line between love and hate.