Hurray For The Riff Raff - My Dearest Darkest Neighbor

Why do the blues endure? Generation after generation, those sad songs are recycled. Hurray for the Riff Raff’s (mostly) covers album My Dearest Darkest Neighbor answers that question. The blues endure because the human condition knows loneliness, morbidity, abandonment, heartbreak, and so on. The vulnerable songs covered on the album honor these phenomena. It does this by stripping down songs to their essence. Folk staples like “Just a Heart” (James Hand) and “People Talkin’ (Lucinda Williams) are accessible in a new way. Hurray for the Riff Raff returns the blues to the bare bones state that down-and-out musicians like Elizabeth Cotton and Lead Belly, two songwriters covered, created the genre to be. (Note: Their cover of Elizabeth Cotton’s “Goin’ Away” is mysteriously not available through Spotify but is through Bandcamp.)

My Dearest Darkest Neighbor is strikingly sparse. If you like the honesty and precision of Gillian Welch, then you will like this album. The album whittles down songs like “Jealous Guy” (John Lennon) and “My Morphine” (Gillian Welch), proving that John Lennon isn’t necessarily grandiose and Gillian Welch can be pared down even more.

Hurray for the Riff Raff’s covers sound as though lead singer/songwriter Alynda Lee Segarra is playing them in your living room. The vocals are certainly intimate enough for it to be true. Her Cat Power-esque rasp is spine tingling, especially on “River” (Joni Mitchell) with its demo-quality rawness. One effect of the “rawness” is that the songs are exposed in purest form, and they shine. Without the flesh of drums, bass, and such, we hear why writers like Van Zandt and Lennon were enormously successful. Much like a house, their songs have good bones; and much like home, they take you in at life’s lowest times. In their songs, we hear why Segarra said on the album’s Bandcamp page that, “[These songs] carry a feeling of home. These songs have been there for me in a dark hour. They’ve guided me down long roads that stretched through time.” Segarra, a Puerto Rican born in the Bronx who left home at seventeen to hop trains, surely knows what Hank Williams meant when he said, “Hear the lonesome whippoorwill/He sounds too blue to fly/The midnight train is whining low/I’m so lonesome I could cry.”

The exceptions to the minimalist theme are “Western Cowboy” (Lead Belly) and “My Sweet Lord” (George Harrison). “My Sweet Lord” has a little ‘50s-style doo-wop backing vocals and a lot of gospel-inspired organ. Lead Belly originally recorded “Western Cowboy” with just his guitar. But the fiddle has its own voice in Hurray for the Riff Raff’s version, and an uncharacteristic peppy drum line is added to great effect.

Segarra’s own tunes, “Angel Ballad” and “Cuckoo,” complement the covers on the album. “Angel Ballad” mimics the guitar line from Gillian Welch’s “Ruination Day,” but lyrically takes a turn. The six-minute song begins to ramble and collapse on itself as the guitar riff marches on. But Segarra redeems herself completely with her own creation, “Cuckoo.” Its simplicity fits in perfectly with the other covers, proving that Segarra is on track to join the leagues of those phenomenal artists covered on My Dearest Darkest Neighbor.

See our review of their SXSW show HERE

About
Latest Posts

Caroline McDonald

My first memory is of singing Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” quietly to myself during preschool naptime. Perhaps it’s because I’m from Nashville where an instrument lives in every home, but music has gripped me for as long as I can remember.

After dabbling in many parts of the music industry—recording studios, PR, management, labels, publishing—I’m expanding into music journalism because I’m yet to find anything more rewarding that finding and sharing new music.

A longtime sucker for girls with guitars, my musical taste unabashedly follows the songwriting lineage of Dolly Parton and includes Patty Griffin, Gillian Welch, and Neko Case. But not to pigeonhole myself, my music love is big love that stretches from R.L. Burnside to Animal Collective to Lord Huron.

I’ve recently moved home to Nashville after living in Boston and Big Sur for several years. I’d forgotten how music pours onto the streets ten hours a day, seven days a week. I’m honored to share the creative explosion happening here. If your band is in the area or of the area, please reach out!