After a fistful of excellent Americana albums written in the fertile loam of New Orleans, Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra has been evolving hard. The Navigator (2017) metabolised their Puerto Rican New York background for an album that slotted into that city’s lineage of lean, leather-jacketed songcraft. Life on Earth – Segarra’s eighth – finds them back in New Orleans, having brought some New York home. It confirms that no matter what’s going on underneath Segarra’s expressive, elastic voice, be it the startling 80s production of Pierced Arrows or the slinky electronics of Jupiter’s Dance, this is an artist with a kneejerk feel for classicism.
A brace of great tunes make the case: Rhododendron nods at Jonathan Richman’s Roadrunner, somehow making wildflowers sound gloriously disreputable. Saga, meanwhile, is a traumatised ballad that channels David Bowie, but with acoustic guitars and horns. Very different, but just as hard-hitting, is Precious Cargo, a breezy rap that recounts the journeys of brave people fetching up at the US border, to be met with violence. “It’s been a terrible news week,” Segarra sings at one point. Life on Earth musters defences: the example of the natural world and the hopeful swagger of humans are just two.
