Hurray for the Riff Raff Looks Back on Life Story on New Album ‘The Past Is Still Alive’

Two years after Life on Earth (ND review), which landed on No Depression’s Critics Poll for Best Roots Music Albums of 2022, Hurray for the Riff Raff will release a new collection of their keen-edged songwriting and adventurous musical spirit on The Past Is Still Alive.

The album, coming Feb. 23 on Nonesuch, finds Alynda Segarra grappling with the passing of time, including the loved ones left behind. With first-person lyrics, Segarra recounts key moments of their childhood, their struggles in early adulthood, and lessons they learned that have carried them to where they are now, in their late 30s. Featured musicians on the album include S.G. Goodman, Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst, and Anjimile, and it was produced by Brad Cook.

The album’s first single, “Alibi,” was recorded during the raw first few weeks after the death of Segarra’s father, but its power comes in feeling a loss before it actually happens.

“‘Alibi’ is a plea, a last ditch effort to get through to someone you already know you’re gonna lose,” Segarra explains in a press release announcing the album. “It’s a song to myself, to my Father, almost fooling myself because I know what’s done is done. But it feels good to beg. A reckoning with time and memory. The song is exhausted with loving someone so much it hurts. Addiction separates us. With memories of the Lower East Side in the early 2000s of my childhood, mixed with imagery of the endless West that calls to artists and wanderers.”

A stage adaptation of Hurray for the Riff Raff’s 2017 album The Navigator, a concept album about an alter ego named Navita exploring their Puerto Rican roots, debuted this summer in New York City. A tour for The Past Is Still Alive begins in February in Segarra’s hometown of New Orleans and will span the US and, in May, the UK and Ireland. Through a partnership with Plus1, one dollar for each ticket sold will be donated to This Must Be the Place, a nonprofit organization that distributes the life-saving medicine Naloxone at music festivals. Naloxone, sometimes referred to by its trade name, Narcan, can reverse the effects of opioid overdose, and doses will be available for free at every stop on Hurray for the Riff Raff’s upcoming tour.

Here is the track list for The Past Is Still Alive:

Alibi
Buffalo
Hawkmoon
Colossus of Roads
Snake Plant (The Past Is Still Alive)
Vetiver
Hourglass
Dynamo
The World Is Dangerous
Ogallala
Kiko Forever