On Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Live Forever, the Past Is Very Much Alive
There’s something tricky about live albums by artists as emotionally direct as Hurray for the Riff Raff, the long-running musical project of songwriter Alynda Segarra. The studio records already feel lived-in, intimate, almost conversational. So a live set has to do more than simply recreate the songs onstage. It has to reveal something new: greater urgency, deeper connection, unexpected looseness, or some sense that the songs only fully come alive in a room full of people.
Live Forever does exactly that.
More than a document of a tour, Live Forever sharpens the larger ideas that have come to define Segarra’s recent work. History hangs over these songs not as backdrop, but as active force.
The Clash’s Joe Strummer once said that “the future is unwritten.” Segarra has spent the past few years making the opposite case: the past is still alive. Not as nostalgia, but as lived reality — history persisting through labor, migration, identity, grief, and community. By performing The Past Is Still Alive in full on Live Forever, Hurray for the Riff Raff turns that idea into something larger than a song cycle. The material begins to feel cumulative and deeply shared, without ever losing the intimacy at the center of Segarra’s writing.
Songs like “Rhododendron” gain a ragged, almost euphoric energy here, while “Pa’lante” arrives less as a familiar encore than collective affirmation. The performances rarely feel polished in the traditional live-album sense; instead, they feel alive, flexible, and emotionally exposed.
Live Forever was recorded at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, one of the country’s most storied homes for traditional and contemporary folk music. Segarra’s songwriting remains deeply rooted in folk traditions, but the musicians surrounding them are not folk purists at all. The current lineup, featuring guitarist Parker Grogan, bassist and vocalist Nnamdi, drummer Marcus Drake, and multi-instrumentalist Sen Morimoto, emerges from Chicago’s DIY and experimental scenes, bringing punk energy, jazz textures, indie-rock looseness, and genre fluidity into songs that resist easy categorization. Recorded at one of America’s most storied folk institutions, Live Forever quietly argues for an expansive definition of folk music itself — one broad enough to include punk ethics, indie-rock textures, jazz phrasing, and the collaborative spirit of Chicago’s independent music community.
That openness has always been central to Hurray for the Riff Raff. Segarra has spent more than a decade building one of the most distinctive catalogs orbiting contemporary Americana, blending folk storytelling, punk ethics, indie-rock experimentation, and socially engaged songwriting into music that rarely sits comfortably inside any single genre. Segarra’s lineage includes folk storytellers and Americana traditionalists, but the deeper spirit may come from artists like Strummer — musicians who treated songs not as museum pieces, but as living tools for resistance, solidarity, and connection.
At times, Segarra’s songwriting recalls early R.E.M., with lyrics that feel emotionally and politically charged even when their precise meanings remain elusive. Her songs operate less as linear narratives than as accumulations of image, memory, movement, and feeling. In a live setting, that ambiguity becomes a strength rather than an obstacle, allowing listeners to inhabit the songs emotionally before fully understanding them intellectually.
That openness extends beyond the stage. Segarra cultivates an unusually direct relationship with listeners through touring, activism, and a Substack presence that feels more conversational than promotional. Live Forever carries that same ethos. Rather than presenting the performances as polished artifacts, the album documents a moment of genuine connection between songs, band, audience, and scene.
However expansive the arrangements become, Segarra’s voice remains the gravitational center of the music. There is both grit and tenderness in the delivery, a quality that makes even the most impressionistic lyrics feel emotionally immediate and fully inhabited. Much of the album’s emotional power ultimately comes from that voice itself: weathered but warm, capable of sounding simultaneously intimate and anthemic. Even at their most abstract, the songs feel emotionally trustworthy because Segarra sings them with such complete conviction.
Live Forever captures more than a performance. It gives us a singular artist, a powerful band, and a remarkable set of songs still revealing new emotional and communal depths in front of an audience.
Find more information here on their website: http://www.hurrayfortheriffraff.com
Enjoy some of our previous coverage here: REVIEW: Hurray For The Riff Raff “The Past Is Still Alive”