The Navigator

Hurray for the Riff Raff’s latest album The Navigator is the follow up to the landmark 2014 release Small Town Heroes on ATO Records.

It’s a concept album largely about gentrification and its protagonist’s navigation of “her gender identity, her sexual identity, class, and race and culture and everything” as her community begins to disappear.

Like a song-cycle from an imaginary Off-Broadway musical, The Navigator rises from the ashes of loneliness and striving, honky tonks and long walks by the river of urban dreams. From the wistful melancholy of Life to Save, to the stubborn resignation of Nothing’s Gonna Change That Girl, Segarra’s voice speaks with a husky weariness that coexists with a naïve curiosity. It’s the voice of a rebel who wanted everyone to think she was so tough, and nobody could take her down, but at the same time was yearning for love and magic, some kind of an awakening.

With its 12 tracks and its Travelers, Sages, and Sirens, The Navigator comes straight at you from the intersection of apocalypse and hope. This album rides Patti Smith’s high horse while straddling Chrissie Hynde’s thin line between love and hate.