★★★★★
Whatever took 26 year old Alynda Lee Segarra from the Lower East Side to New Orleans and performing old time country and folk music is probably a tale in itself, but until she pens her memoirs, Small Town Heroes will tell her story. And what a story it is.Segarra, of Puerto Rican descent, grew up in the Bronx where she was exposed to doo-wop and Motown, and finally heading downtown where she reveled in riot grrl shows, finding a kinship amid the other alienated punks...
- www.ink19.com
2014-06-03
★★★★★
It's about time Alynda Lee Segarra got some proper attention. After choosing to drift around North America in her teens and early twenties, working her way from The Bronx down to America's southern party centre, New Orleans, Segarra started making music under her Hurray For The Riff Raff moniker in 2008, self-releasing two albums before combining them into a best of for 2011's UK self titled debut. 2012's Look Out Mama brought her some good press...
- music.thedigitalfix.com
2014-04-04
★★★★★
Their faultless fifth album pays homage to a variety of roots forms. There are easy-going country laments here, harmonicas, a blues or three and even a doo-wop number, all doffing hats to tradition. Segarra's caramel voice goes down spectacularly easily, and the effortless swing of these songs suggest she was born and bred under a bandstand south of the Mason-Dixon line (spoiler alert: she wasn't). Segarra, though, isn't content to let a dead girl lie...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-03-30
★★★★★
Can southern gothic be playful? That's one question raised by the fifth album from Alynda Lee Segarra's troupe. Small Town Heroes places at its centre The Body Electric, a song that takes the template of the murder ballad - "He shot her down, put her body in the river" - then asks why the killing of women becomes a fit subject for entertainment, "while the whole world sings/ sings it like a song"...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-03-28
★★★★★
Label:
ATO
Release Date:
31/03/2014
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At just 27, Alynda Lee Segarra, the lynchpin of Hurray For The Riff Raff, already has a biography that reads like the outline of a folk ballad. Born in The Bronx, she left home at 17 to live a transient lifestyle, travelling the US on freight trains and falling in with a collective of hobo musicians, before finally settling down amidst the violence and disruption of post-Katrina New Orleans...
- drownedinsound.com
2014-03-27
★★★★★
At just 27, Alynda Lee Segarra, the lynchpin of , already has a biography that reads like the outline of a folk ballad. Born in The Bronx, she left home at 17 to live a transient lifestyle, travelling the US on freight trains and falling in with a collective of hobo musicians, before finally settling down amidst the violence and disruption of post-Katrina New Orleans...
- www.drownedinsound.com
2014-03-26
★★★★★
Alynda Lee Segarra makes up the whole of Hurray for the Riff Raff. Originally from the Bronx, she's settled in New Orleans, and in many ways
- www.austinchronicle.com
2014-03-13
★★★★★
"I've got Louisiana on my mind," sings Hurray for the Riff Raff's Alynda Lee Segarraon "Crash on the Highway" from her band's ATO debut. There is no doubt that she means it. Throughout the album, she not only sings about her New Orleans home and the rocky plight of Americans pursuing their dreams in the South--possibly a microcosm of America as a whole--but also offers songs with an authority gained in the heat of the battle...
- www.relix.com
2014-03-14
★★★★★
Nods to Haiti and Other Traditions
New Albums by Leyla McCalla, Angel Olsen and Supreme Cuts
Angel Olsen, the singer-guitarist who just released her second album. Zia Anger
Angel OlsenBURN YOUR FIRE FOR NO WITNESS Whether she's playing a lone lo-fi guitar or fronting her Velvets-rooted studio band, whether she's singing as if only to herself or opening up with hints of torchy sorrow, Angel Olsen...
- www.nytimes.com
2014-02-21