Hurray For The Riff Raff: Small Town Heroes (Coloured Vinyl LP)

Hurray For The Riff Raff release Small Town Heroes, its debut for ATO Records. The album features frontwoman Alynda Lee Segarra – who settled in New Orleans after leaving her native Bronx at age 17- with twelve new, original songs all written or co-written by Segarra, with support from a vivid cast of Crescent City musicians.

Hurray for the Riff Raff ‘sweeps across eras and genres with grace and grit,’ never more so than on Small Town Heroes. On the hedonist country lament ‘I Know It’s Wrong (But That’s Alright)’ Segarra sings to a forbidden love “I’ll feed you watermelon off the vine,” while on ‘The Body Electric‘ she exposes the misogyny of the traditional murder ballad, and warns “Delia’s gone, but I’m settling the score.”

Ultimately though, many of the songs embody that most magical and fated of American cities, New Orleans. Segarra bears witness to a wave of violence that struck the St. Roch neighbourhood in ‘St. Roch Blues’; yearns for a night at BJ’s Bar in the Bywater in ‘Crash on the Highway’; and sings of her own Lower Ninth Ward home in ‘End of the Line'.

Opaque purple vinyl version.

1. Blue Ridge Mountain
2. Crash on the Highway
3. Good Time Blues (An Outlaw’s Lament)
4. End of the Line
5. The New SF Bay Blues
6. The Body Electric
7. On No Else
8. St. Roch Blues
9. Levon’s Dream
10. I Know It’s Wrong (But That’s Alright)
11. Small Town Heroes
12. Forever Is Just A Day