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Pitchfork’s Best New Music Pick + 8.3 Album Rating

NPR All Songs Considered New Music Friday

North American tour begins March 19; European dates announced for summer

“Alynda Segarra’s powerful … album exudes a glorious irreverence. Their self-described “nature punk” songs are both intimate and immense, and they’ve never sounded more honest or self-possessed … Segarra’s melodies, some so beautiful that they seem to have existed forever, make them stay.” —Pitchfork

“A major step forward for one of today’s most vital artists. The first great album of 2022.” – Uncut

“[Segarra] has a voice rooted in history, making music to change the present … the voice of the future.” —NPR

“Segarra has further sharpened their ability to convey big ideas and stir complex emotions with the most basic turns of phrase. Often one or two lines contain whole worlds.” —Stereogum

Life on Earth is a departure for the New Orleans-based Segarra (they/she). Its eleven new “nature punk” tracks on the theme of survival are music for a world in flux—songs about thriving, not just surviving, while disaster is happening. For their eighth full-length album, Segarra drew inspiration from The Clash, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Bad Bunny, and the author of Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown. Recorded during the pandemic, Life on Earth was produced by Brad Cook (Waxahatchee, Bon Iver, Kevin Morby).

Life on Earth has received critical praise already, appearing on most anticipated records of 2022 lists by NPR, Pitchfork, the Guardian, Stereogum, the Observer, Vulture, the Wall Street Journal, Paste, the Evening Standard, and the Irish Times, among others. The Guardian says, “What’s most impressive about Life on Earth is the way Segarra metabolises bleak and disturbing subjects into songs that brim with hope, beauty and cheer,” while the Observer says, “Hurray for the Riff Raff promises a manual for Life on Earth, a ‘nature punk’ album for tough times,” and NPR’s Ann Powers says, “If you need some music to take you forward in this strange winter, I think Life on Earth is gonna do it for you.” Mojo, in its four-star review, calls it “a remarkably delicate, tender record full of gentle empathy, of lines that ring with the truth of shared experience. Hurray for The Riff Raff might not be able to save the world, but Life on Earth is a compassionate, humane record at a time when it can only be a gift.”

Alynda Segarra was born and raised in the Bronx, which they left at age seventeen, running away from everything and everyone they knew, hopping freight trains or hitchhiking across the country in the company of a band of street urchins. Segarra moved to New Orleans in 2007 and formed two bands: Dead Man’s Street Orchestra and Hurray for the Riff Raff. In 2015, Segarra decamped to Nashville, then to New York, to make 2017’s critically praised The Navigator, an ambitious and fully realized concept album that was her quest to reclaim her Puerto Rican identity. Segarra’s previous records as Hurray for the Riff Raff are Crossing the Rubicon (EP, 2007), It Don’t Mean I Don’t Love You (2008), Young Blood Blues (2010), Hurray for the Riff Raff (2011), Look Out Mama (2012),My Dearest Darkest Neighbor (2013), and Small Town Heroes (2014).

LIFE ON EARTH

1. WOLVES
2. PIERCED ARROWS
3. POINTED AT THE SUN
4. RHODODENDRON
5. JUPITER’S DANCE
6. LIFE ON EARTH
7. nightqueen
8. PRECIOUS CARGO
9. ROSEMARY TEARS
10. SAGA
11. KiN

Hurray for the Riff Raff Tour

Anjimile supports all North American tour dates (except New Orleans)

*Amelia Jackie opens