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Hurray For The Riff Raff Makes A Statement At SXSW

"I'm ready for the world," Alynda Lee Segarra sings in the chorus of the rousing "Hungry Ghost" — and her band's set told that simple truth again and again. In the past seven or eight years, Hurray For The Riff Raff has blossomed slowly but fully, transforming its sound from intense-but-delicate one-woman bedroom recordings to the rip-roaring full-band jams that dominated the group's set at Stubb's BBQ in Austin, Texas, recorded live for NPR Music Wednesday night.

Segarra commanded rapt attention throughout a string of powerful songs from Hurray For The Riff Raff's new album The Navigator, which examines her Puerto Rican heritage and a search for what she calls "my lost humanity." Wearing a homemade T-shirt that read "No Human Is Illegal," Segarra roared through songs that seethed with coiled intensity — even the slow-burning ballad "Fourteen Floors," for which Segarra took over on keyboards, was performed with to-the-skies power. So, yeah: Ready for the world.

Set List

  • "Life To Save"
  • "Nothing's Gonna Change That Girl"
  • "Hungry Ghost"
  • "Rican Beach"
  • "The Navigator"
  • "Living In The City"
  • "Fourteen Floors"
  • "Pa'lante"
  • Credits

    Producers: Robin Hilton, Mito Habe-Evans; Director: Colin Marshall; Technical Director: Josh Rogosin; Audio Engineer: Timothy Powell/Metro Mobile; Concert Videographers: Lizzie Chen, Mito Habe-Evans, Nickolai Hammar, Katie Hayes Luke, Kelly West; Editor: Morgan Noelle Smith; Supervising Editor: Niki Walker; Executive Producer: Anya Grundmann; Special Thanks: SXSW, Stubb's BBQ

    Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

    Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)