New Music 2017 - Part 2 - Hurray For The Riff Raff - The Navigator

In my opinion there is never a bad time to welcome a new album from Hurray For The Riff Raff but, as it happens, early 2017 seems an especially propitious one for a number of reasons. Alynda Lee Segarra and her band are always ready to take on social, cultural and political challenges in their songs and there is no reason to think that things will change at least in that respect, this time around.

'The Navigator' - Hurray For The Riff Raff (ATO Records, 10 March 2017).

The Navigator - Hurray For The Riff Raff:

• Entrance
• Living In The City
• Hungry Ghost
• Life to Safe
• Nothing’s Gonna Change Girl
• The Navigator
• Halfway There
• Rican Beach
• Fourteen Floors
• Settle
• Pa’lante
• Finale

The lead track is Rican Beach, about which some reviewers have expressed surprise at the direction of the sound. I like it and even if that were not so I wouldn't be overly concerned. I'd actually be rather more worried if it just sounded like an out-take from an earlier LP and to that end I have pre-ordered the album. I have trust in certain artists, festivals and labels. Hurray For The Riff Raff is most definitely one of the former.

Rican Beach

So what is next?

Here is a song-and-a-half and now a suitably great video to go with it... Ooh. This attempt to embed Vevo video might not work out as intended first time! Let's just see what happens... I like meddling, but the real point is that this video is simply too good not to share.  It worked for six months and then it didn't.  Fair is fair. Here is a direct replacement.

Well it could have been worse; at least something happened now I have meddled with it some more and that's OK, at least for now. If you think that Alynda Lee Segarra is a tough cookie then you are right. That, however, is certainly far from the whole story.

She is also one of the most self-effacing artists that I have ever met.

End Of The Road Festival 2012.

New Music 2013 - Part 5 - The Stand-In (again)

I have mentioned this album once already. This is the second track to be released from it:


'I Was Cruel', with its mandolin and pedal-steel, would be worth it for that alone. It is actually a whole lot better than that might imply. It is the second track on 'The Stand-In', for which a vignette of what I believe to be the LP cover is in the side-bar and the track-listing as follows:

• No One to Call
• I Was Cruel
• Waiting
• Only A Clown
• Dallas
• Pink Champagne
• Golden Boy
• Silver Sings
• Everywhere I Go
• When I'm Gone
• Menagerie
• Old Numbers

Will it be available on vinyl? Well, it would be cruel not to... and I shall be on the case.

Asleep Again? What happened to Jem...

Finally Woken (ATO Records LLC/Sony BMG)

and 2004 seems so long ago.

I'm still not convinced that I'm sure what is going on here, as some major label murkiness seems to be involved, but the second album - title unknown to me - was originally due to be released in early 2007 but now "sometime in 2008" is the best I can find... If it ever appears then it is said that Lester Mendez (Shakira et al) is involved which is a good sign and I haven't found anything that indicates she has been dropped by her label.

I still stick by my guns and that is to say that I think Finally Woken sounds as good now as I thought it did then. I would, in fact, hazard a guess owing to its style and sound that was it released new in 2008 it would actually have fared even better than it did in 2004 as it combines cross-genre fascination with organic performance; both of which are fuelling the ascent of live music at the moment.
Her siblings, Georgia and Justin, are one third of indie-punk-hiphop/rap band Weapons and they released their eponymous debut album in September 2006 on their own label, Wicked Old Lady Records, and Jem joins them on track seven, The Thieves, but sadly I have yet to track a copy down.

That said, while looking into all this, I have discovered something else. While the album Pet Deaths seems to be a long time coming in the meantime another South Wales singer-songwriter, Cate Le Bon, is to release an EP on Cardiff label Peski Records on 21st April and only on 10" vinyl:

Edrych yn Llygaid Ceffyl Benthyg.
Sebon.co.uk - Peski009