On their sixth album, Hurray for the Riff Raff have come full circle, ending up where the band’s songwriter, Alynda Segarra, started off. If that sounds like a lacklustre plug for one of the albums of the year, it really shouldn’t be. The Navigator represents a return from years of wandering – or, as Segarra puts it: “I’ve been a hungry ghost,” referencing the far eastern myth of the restless spirit for whom food offerings are left out. The Navigator is billed as a concept album about an alter ego called Navita, but the teenage punk Segarra ran away from the Bronx, New York to ride in boxcars, busking roots music. She lost friends to this high-risk life, eventually creating a community of like-minded musicians in New Orleans. This lineup of Hurray for the Riff Raff reimagined Americana (more feminist, more inclusive) with a pair of wonderful albums – 2012’s Look Out Mama and 2014’s Small Town Heroes – before Segarra moved on, again.
Now, this most roving of songwriters has re-engaged with her own heritage as a New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent. The Navigator is a timely set of songs in which Segarra channels Patti Smith, the poetry of Nuyorican writer Pedro Pietri, and the sounds of 70s New York (Living in the City, Fourteen Floors) alongside easygoing, more Puerto Rican forms; she explores gentrification, the Hispanic-American condition (Finale) and perhaps most importantly, her own internal fluctuations. “I just want to fall in love, and not fuck it up,” she sings on Pa’lante, ostensibly a protest song for her Puerto Rican forebears, but a rousing call to self-actualisation to anyone feeling marginalised in 2017.
Focusing on Segarra’s fascinating backstory and thematic arcs has one drawback: it takes airtime from her strengths as a tunesmith. The Navigator might be full of site-specific anger and yearning, but like its predecessors, it is incredibly easy on the ear. The songs just flow – slinky, sad or elegant in their own ways.
Beautifully produced by Paul Butler and played by a new line-up that features the eloquent guitar of Jordan Hyde and fluid rhythms of drummer Greg Rogove, this is a fusion album that wears its border-busting chops very lightly indeed. Album highlight Nothing’s Gonna Change That Girl is a country love song that gradually eases into more aromatic polyrhythms. Entrance, meanwhile, opens the album with a doo-wop group singing a gospel tune. Its most political moment, the stark Pa’lante, has an unexpected middle eight that’s pure Beatles. There’s not a lot you can’t sing along to, whoever you are.
