Partner Movie Questionnaire

Perhaps, my favorite aspect of taking this quiz – even more than gauging my first instincts in each category – was having the opportunity to see what each of us responded and how pleased I am as a whole. I think it’s extremely cool that you could pretty much swap out my answers for the answers Macy gave on about four out of every five questions, and I’d have a hard time arguing that whatever the response is isn’t accurate. I quite enjoyed that revelation.

Cheers!

 

 

 

What is your favorite movie?

Justin: Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)

Macy: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)

 

What is the last movie you watched?

Justin: A War (Tobias Lindholm)

Macy: The Eyes of My Mother (Nicolas Pesce)

 

What is your favorite action/adventure movie?

Justin: No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen)

Macy: Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)

 

What is your favorite horror movie?

Justin: The Shining (Stanley Kubrick)

Macy: Cabin in the Woods (Joss Whedon)

 

What is your favorite drama?

Justin: Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick)

Macy: Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)

 

What is your favorite comedy?

Justin: Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater)

Macy: The World’s End (Edgar Wright) / This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner)

 

What is a movie that makes you happy?

Justin: Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe)

Macy: Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks)

 

What is a movie that makes you sad?

Justin: Blue Valentine* (Derek Cianfrance)

Macy: Candy (Neil Armfield)

*(sad in all the best ways)

 

What is a movie you practically know the whole script of?

Justin: High Fidelity (Stephen Frears)

Macy: How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (Donald Petrie)

*Macy added “Ugh.” beside her answer here.

 

Who is your favorite director?

Justin: Paul Thomas Anderson

Macy: Wes Anderson

 

What is your favorite movie from your childhood?

Justin: White Men Can’t Jump (Ron Shelton)

Macy: The Sound of Music (Robert Wise)

*People may think this is a cheat on my behalf, but I really did watch White Men Can’t Jump on what seems like a near-weekly basis when I was 12 or 13 (or at least this is what my skewed memory is telling me now). In any case, I choose to believe picking an R-rated movie in this category balances out my honest response for first movie seen in theaters.

 

What is your favorite animated movie?

Justin: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)

Macy: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)

 

What movie did you used to love but now hate?

Justin: The Boondock Saints (Troy Duffy)

Macy: House of Wax (Jaume Collet-Serra)

*We did some finagling in this category and each agreed to respond to it more as “What is a movie you’ve seen many times – possibly more times than many movies you love – that you hate and/or don’t enjoy nearly as much as you maybe once did?” Macy says she’s sat through at least parts of House of Wax a dozen or so times and never wanted to once. I liked The Boondock Saints when I was a teenager, but my appreciation hasn’t held up as I’ve aged past my college years. That was the one that came to mind. Something like Bad Boys or Con Air or Blade may be an even more accurate response, but I’ll stick with my gut reaction.  

 

What is your favorite quote from any movie?

Justin: “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.” (Almost Famous)

Macy: “Sand is overrated. It’s just tiny, little rocks.” (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)

 

What was the first movie you saw in theaters?

Justin: The Land Before Time

Macy: Beauty and the Beast

*I hope somebody appreciates how much it bugs me that I have The Land Before Time (which I probably haven’t thought about since I was five years old) on my list, but I’ve had to omit most P.T. Anderson, Wes Anderson, Scorsese, Linklater, Coppola (Francis and Sofia), Spielberg and Kubrick films I adore, not to mention so many others.

 

What was the last movie you saw in theaters?

Justin: The Lost City of Z (James Gray)

Macy: Colossal (Nacho Villagando)

*At the time, The Lost City of Z was the last movie either of us saw in theaters, but Macy skipped over it in her mind. We saw Colossal together the prior week. I enjoy that we saw the same movies at the same times, but we were able to put down two different answers here to spread the love.

 

What is the best movie you’ve seen in the past year?

Justin: The Broken Circle Breakdown (Felix van Groeningen)

Macy: 20^th Century Women (Mike Mills)

 

Which movie disappointed you the most?

Justin: The Counselor (Ridley Scott)

Macy: La La Land (Damien Chazelle)

*Macy was mostly disappointed La La Land was only slightly better than average, rather than becoming one of her favorite movies of all time. The Counselor frustrates me because of the magnitude of monstrous talent on board (Cormac McCarthy, Michael Fassbender, Ridley Scott, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Penelope Cruz, a totally insane Cameron Diaz role) and yet it’s a pulpy mess that I never can decide if I almost adore or pretty much pity.

 

Who is your favorite actor?

Justin: Paul Newman

Macy: Peter Sellers

 

Who is your favorite actress?

Justin: Marion Cotillard

Macy: Katherine Hepburn

 

What is the most overrated movie?

Justin: The Avengers (Joss Whedon)

Macy: The Fast and the Furious – all of them

*We probably won’t be popular for these ones, but at least we’re being honest. Also, I wholly support Macy’s pick here, but I’m totally on my own with mine.

 

What is the most underrated movie?

Justin: Short Term 12 (Destin Daniel Cretton)

Macy: Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)

 

Who is your favorite character from any movie?

Justin: Bill the Butcher (Gangs of New York)

Macy: Marla Singer (Fight Club)         

 

What is your favorite documentary?

Justin: Searching for Sugar Man (Malik Bendjelloul)

Macy: Mistaken for Strangers (Tom Berninger)

 

What is a movie no one would expect you to love?

Justin: Bound (The Wachowskis)

Macy: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Stanley Donen)

 

What is a movie that is a guilty pleasure?

Justin: Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe)

Macy: Mean Girls (Mark Waters)

 

What is your favorite classic movie?

Justin: Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)

Macy: The Court Jester (Melvin Frank, Norman Panama)

 

Which movie has the best soundtrack?

Justin: Under the Skin

Macy: Elizabethtown

*Macy told me I cheated here, because I chose favorite score rather than soundtrack. Honestly, you could insert any Wes Anderson or Tarantino soundtrack here for me, and I would agree in seconds. Same goes for most Cameron Crowe movies, I’m Not There, High Fidelity, Trainspotting and so many others. Rather than picking a curated mixtape of songs I already own and love, I opted for Mica Levi’s Under the Skin score that captivated and haunted me from the opening shot until the end credits. You could also substitute Levi’s score for Jackie or Jóhann Jóhannsson’s original scores for Sicario or Arrival, and they’d be my favorites, too. And I’d more readily purchase those on vinyl before any other movie soundtracks.

 

What is a movie that has changed your opinion about something?

Justin: Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)

Macy: Joe (David Gordon Green)

*Weird category all around that’s kind of hard to make sense of. Anyhow, I loved Do the Right Thing from the first time I saw it as a college kid, and I feel it tightened my moral compass in some ways at the right time and helped me appreciate character development and tension. Joe changed Macy’s mind that Nicolas Cage isn’t an absolutely wretched actor 100% of the time, so much so that she has agreed to sit through a ten-film, Cage-related marathon of my choosing at some point in the near future.

 

What is your least favorite movie?

Justin: Cabin in the Woods (Joss Whedon)

Macy: Battleship (Peter Berg)

*I already hear all of you chastising me right now. I don’t care. I stand by this response, and I can handle your wrath.

 

 

Toni Marshall - The First Second Time Around

Unless you live within the limits of the far north side of Indianapolis, there’s a terribly high probability you’ve never encountered the music of Toni Marshall.

That’s no great surprise, but it is a damn shame – especially if you’re the sort who appreciates gorgeous folk songs.

Toni is a staggeringly prolific songwriter and musician who has continued creating, pushing, advancing despite whatever odds each day brings, and it has been etched right into the recorded output for about a decade and a half.

Intelligent, earnest, deftly-played acoustic folk not in fashion? So be it. It was perfect and timeless in the hands of Dylan and Young, and it still works wonders when done right these days. See: The Tallest Man on Earth, Gillian Welch, Dave Rawlings, Jeff Tweedy, Ryley Walker, Ryan Adams, et cetera.

Toni’s songs have beguiling power and bring many of these people to mind whenever I hear them or see them played live, and Marshall’s brand new album, The First Second Time Around (listen/buy on Bandcamp or Spotify), is the best evidence of this. And I don’t say this merely put through any sort of local-Indiana-artist filter; I say this as a lover of folk songs and live music and as a rabid fan of every artist I cited above.

So what if the music is born from a little, rural town twenty or so miles from a small-market Midwestern city? Toni knows the odds, and still quietly writes and records a legitimate treasure trove of original songs and uploads them into the world and hopes for them to find their way to passionate ears. It’s what a genuine artist does, and I can’t think of someone I cross paths with more frequently who deserves that title more than Toni Marshall.

I’d seen Toni play a dozen or so times (typically at our respective favorite local brewery) over the past handful of years prior to the release of the previous full-length album, Phantasmatabulous. Toni’s vocal delivery was always intimate and captivating, the playing more rhythmic, adventurous and refined than even most good acoustic guitarists. The combination creates an atmosphere that is special and palpable in a live setting, even when performed solo in a typically chatty bar around midnight on a Saturday. Yet, what always keeps me enchanted through the din is the indelible magnitude of the song: Toni’s ability to craft rich, yearning lyrics, marry them with a memorable chorus that’s usually half sweet, half anguished and consistently pretty (think Elliott Smith, Aimee Mann) and anchor them to original, dexterous guitar work that soars and swells.

I bought Phantasmatabulous the night of the release party, and I was thrilled to discover soon after that Toni’s self-released recordings do justice to the songs and could stand up against other more widely known artists when I switched the albums back and forth on my stereo. I meant to write something about Toni back then, but something came up or I was on some writing hiatus or felt overwhelmed by previous commitments. In any case, I didn’t and have wanted to ever since.

Weeks later when I saw Toni, I said how much I liked the record. In response, Toni handed me a zip drive containing what I was told was a recorded discography to date. I expected two or three albums, maybe an additional EP or two. And then I put the zip drive in my computer. What I discovered were more than a dozen full-length albums spanning more than a decade and five or so EPs, many under differing names, all self-released, intriguing and wildly versatile with increasing production proficiency from one release to the next. Some fifteen-minute ambient instrumental recordings, some lo-fi bedroom folk-pop, a dose of solid, intellectually-minded politically-charged rap, and a wealth of excellent folk instrumentals and original songs. It reminded me of getting into Bright Eyes around the release of Lifted... and then discovering all the albums and songs a virtuosic teen named Conor had been putting out for about a decade prior. It’s how I imagine any person who becomes a Daniel Johnston fan feels the moment they really get into his music. Or, more recently, it’s probably sort of like trying to dig through all the older Bandcamp releases of a Pitchfork-certified “Best New Music” artist like Car Seat Headrest or Sandy (Alex G) when you thought you were on to a new artist who miraculously got good overnight. I was even more overwhelmed about the prospect of writing about Toni than before, but it would take some time to absorb it all and know when to. I knew I need to, though, because nobody else was writing about Toni as far as I could tell, especially nobody even semi-tangential to the wider music community.

All of that goes a long way to explaining why I’m covering Toni Marshall and why I’m writing this now, three years later: Toni’s The First Second Time Around is, simply put, the best folk album I’ve heard in 2017 and one of the finest collection of acoustic songs I’ve heard in years. There’s no qualifier for “as a local artist.” The record is an earnest work of art that is as good in the genre as any other I’ve heard. Toni may live only a couple miles from me and regularly perform at my favorite brewery, but that doesn’t devalue the depth and artistry of the music. Upon announcing the release of The First Second Time Around, Toni said, “I feel like I’ve made my Blood on the Tracks.” Such a confident and bold statement made me even hungrier than before to hear new music from Toni, and damn it, Toni just may be spot on. The album has only been out for a little over a week now, but I’m several listens into these songs and they keep me coming back, in more than a little awe with each fresh visit. It is Toni Marshall’s most outstanding release to date, and this is the perfect time for you to dive in and listen up if you haven’t already.

The Fist Second Time Around is out now. Visit Toni Marshall's Bandcamp page for more releases.

Preview: Ha Ha Tonka at White Rabbit Cabaret in Indianapolis



Ha Ha Tonka
Photo Credit: Jason Gonulsen

 

Next Saturday (June 3) the Ozarks, Missouri-based band Ha Ha Tonka will visit Indianapolis for the first time in a few years to perform at the White Rabbit Cabaret in Fountain Square. Touring right on the coattails of the release of the band’s new album, Heart-Shaped Mountain (released in March via Bloodshot Records), its fifth full-length, Ha Ha Tonka has dialed up the signature harmonies and expanded the instrumental palette with an emphasis on choruses tailor-made for singing along with lyrics that eye the horizon as time passes and lives adapt to the changes.

Throughout the run of Buckle in the Bible Belt, Novel Songs of the Nouveau South, Death of a Decade, Lessons and, now, Heart-Shaped Mountain, Ha Ha Tonka has focused on the strength of the song while tapping into an unwavering sense of Midwestern and Southern identity built into the DNA of each record. The studio recordings, all worthy introductions to listeners at whichever point they arrive, are secondary to the charismatic verve and worn-in tightness that anchor the soaring live sets. The ten tunes of Heart-Shaped Mountain, a streamlined, unapologetically melodic and hopeful collection, likely segue right into the Tonk’s already impressive catalog when played before an audience. Barnstorming opener “Race to the Bottom” and the rollicking and infectious anthem “Arkansas” will tower right alongside the dozen or guitar-driven nuggets that populate most live sets, while harmony-rich entries like “Everything,” “The Party” and “All With You” should serve up instrumental flourishes and more communal catharsis for a memorable weekend night in a year increasingly mired in unrelenting despair with each successive day. Having seen and loved three Ha Ha Tonka live shows to date over the years, I’ve been eagerly awaiting my next opportunity to catch them live. Right now feels like an especially ideal time for an hour or two of rock and roll buoyancy on a Saturday night, and the chance to hear how well several of these new songs fit in alongside all the ones I’ve been singing along with for years only sweetens the deal.

MOKB Presents Ha Ha Tonka w/ Trapper Schoepp at White Rabbit Cabaret in Indianapolis

Saturday, June 3

Tickets: $15

Robbie Fulks, Live in Indianapolis

Robbie Fulks performed in Indianapolis for the first time since his most recent excellent album, Upland Stories, earned a 2017 Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album along with the nod for “Alabama at Night” as Best American Roots Song. All the acclaim is warranted for the Chicago-based country-folk musician, who has been picking and playing professionally for thirty-odd years while also putting out consistently impressive records since 1996’s Country Love Songs. His set in Indy on Friday night ran the gamut of his richly stocked catalog, pulling out Country Love Song favorites like “Tears Only Run One Way,” “I Push Right Over” and “Let’s Kill Saturday Night” right alongside newer gems like Upland Stories’ “Katy Kay” and “A Miracle” and Gone Away Backwards’ “Sometimes the Grass Really Is Greener” and “That’s Where I’m From.” Fulks, acoustic guitar tucked in hand, served as the ringleader for his crackling quintet, a new touring lineup featuring longtime collaborator Shad Cobb (Osborne Brothers, Steve Earle) on fiddle, upright bassist Dennis Crouch, mandolinist Matt Flinner and Punch Brothers banjoist Noam Pikelny on just their fourth show together of bluegrass-tinted country jams, and the lively group played off each other with precision and enthusiasm so as to fool anyone into thinking they’d been doing it all together forever. 

 


Upland Stories promo photo
Credit: Andy Goodwin

 

The mostly seated audience of eighty or so looked on and jovially bantered back and forth with the always humorous Fulks between songs as he shuffled impressions and improvisational comedic exchanges throughout the evening. Fulks has breezy, conversational engagement with a crowd that showcases his deftness for being a lauded musician, first and foremost, and also a performer wholly at ease.

 

“I can’t count the number of times I’ve played in Indianapolis,” Fulks joked early. “Yeah, I can: three times. Three times in thirty years.”

 

Soon after, he chuckled at a four-letter quip from the crowd. “It’s gonna be a raunchy show tonight,” he teased.  “You’re a raunchy crowd. And this is from a raunchy 54-year-old white guy.”

 

In Chicago, his residency at the Hideout (he played his resident finale in March) is rather legendary in some circles, an eclectic live theater of original songs, nights covering albums and catalogs of unexpected artists, and a rogue’s gallery of cameos, performances and talents. Not having been privy to experiencing a Hideout set firsthand, a Friday night with Robbie on stage with his sharpshooting players provided a solid snapshot of what’s in store any time Fulks is before a crowd with instruments in tow: great songs and loads of off-the-cuff wit and silver-tongued one-liners that blend into a memorable evening of expertly played bluegrass-folk, open mic comedy indebted to Johnny Carson and little doses of improv theater. It’d be an absolute joy to witness in an even better, non-rundown venue with more character than Birdy’s, but for a Friday night a little off the beaten path in Indianapolis, Fulks provided the entertainment and soundtrack to a delightful couple hours.

Joshua James - My Spirit Sister

Joshua James has one of those rare, arresting voices that somehow sneaks up on you with its vulnerability and hushed prettiness while also consuming your attention with its earnestness. That is, of course, if you’re the sort who is predisposed to hang on every word of singer-songwriter and folk musician who pours himself and his worldview into his art. That James and his bandmates weave together ethereal and eerily serene musical backdrops for that voice and James’s simultaneously stark and sweet-natured lyrics only tightens his songs’ impressive hold on you the more you live with them.

His music has had that effect on me ever since the first time I pressed play on “Coal War” back in 2009, after taking a chance by purchasing Build Me This at my favorite local record store without hearing a note of his music or knowing anything about James other than being entranced by that austere gothic Americana album art. It’s a record I fell in love with and listened to front to back for years, providing the soundtrack for multiple solo road trips crossing multiple state lines, including several songs on nearly every mixtape I passed on to friends. It’s an album I still keep coming back to, sometimes after a year or so absence and inspired to hear it fresh after having it pulled to the forefront of my mind by some whim or song I come across, and it holds up beautifully. So does anything Joshua James has made in the interim years: From the Top of Willamette Mountain, the Beware EP and his exquisitely crafted album of Modest Mouse covers, Well, Then, I’ll Go to Hell.

 

That makes it all the more of a pleasure to report that his new album, My Spirit Sister, not only holds up alongside everything that has come before, but it may even transcend those quietly excellent releases. It is a streamlined collection of ten songs etched in utter intimacy while conjuring up grand expanses. James’s music always carries a mystical wind with a modest, Western spirit, fitting with his Utah roots and fondness for mountains, animals and nature imagery in his lyrics. Now, his songs, as evocative as ever in their poetry, are more dynamic and arranged and produced with such precision that they feel as fully alive as the landscapes he treks. They rustle and build to roars, and they crackle and smolder on their way to organic choruses that nestle in your head. Songs like “Broken Tongue,” “Golden Bird,” “Backbone Bend,” and “Losin’ Mi Mente” thrive on James’s guileless introspection and seem to inhabit some enchanting plane between prayer and ghost story. These are pensive songs of solitude, wayward wonder, tenuous romance, and lovelorn optimism, but the dances between valleys and peaks make the whole work a consistent joy to behold. From the gorgeous, emotionally complex ode to his newborn daughter, “Millie,” to the confessional two-punch masterwork of “Dark Cloud” and “Blackbird Sorrow” to close the album, Joshua James crafts songs of love and one’s relationship to self, lovers and surroundings in search of indelible truths and self-actualization measured against the passing of time.

Always with an understanding of mortality while finding poetry in what’s in front of him and beyond his reach, he keeps making pure, poignant songs full of buoyant, red-blooded spirit even if occasionally burdened with a heavy heart. For the uninitiated, maybe imagine some intersection of a huskier-voiced Elliott Smith’s fragile melancholy and melodies, starkly Western-gazing folk of Springsteen’s Nebraska, the lush, soaring harmonies and hooks of Fleet Foxes, and a comparable thematic core to Raymond Carver stories. It all amounts to a sterling album that feels so deceptively effortless it’s tempting to think Joshua James was born to make it, but rest assured he had to go through more than a little hell and had to find beauty in all the hardship to do so.

 

My Spirit Sister was self-released by Joshua James and is out now (released April 7, 2017).

Find it here.

Cory Branan - Adios

On his fifth full-length album, Adios, Cory Branan executes a dazzling collection of genre-crossing, silver-tongued songs with hearts of gold, whiskey breath, doses of regret and fury. Yet another wildly impressive entry into Branan’s already esteemed catalog, Adios is an addictive, sprawling 14-song output that whirls the listener into a musical gale of top-shelf songwriting, each tune as beguiling as the next for varying highs, that chugs along at expert paces and results in his finest record yet. At the very least, it’s a lock for the eventual top rungs of my picks for favorite albums of 2017.

Adios kicks off surprisingly and swiftly with the infectiously melodic Buddy Holly bounce of “I Only Know,” flanked by Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace and Dave Hause. “I was told this road goes straight to hell,” Branan sings on the album’s opening line before delivering the killer lyric “So what you gonna do with all that youth? Just because it’s brutal don’t make it truth” in the fashion Cory Branan does better and more consistently than any songwriter of his generation. Early single “Imogene” carries that torch even further, showcasing Branan’s drawled, seemingly inexhaustible vocabulary (“ne’er-do-well roustabout, detestable itinerate, execrable degenerate”) and wordplay (rhyming hemorrhaging and Imogene to subtle perfection). All of it would be great enough on paper, but Branan and his bandmates, Robbie Crowell (formerly of Deer Tick) on drums, keys, horns and percussion and James “Haggs” Haggerty on bass, propel “Imogene” and the thirteen other lyrically clever and striking constructions into indelible, catchy hooks and arrangements across the whole of Adios. With his idiosyncratic way with words as a songwriter’s songwriter and southerner, it’s never too much of a stretch to draw a line to Branan as at least some minor shade of modern day Mark Twain with a guitar.

 Twain is not the only great who comes to mind here, though: “Blacksburg” has more legitimate E Street shuffle and soul (check that glorious sax solo) than anything since The Rising, “You Got Through” channels a Tom Petty snarl with guitar-driven Heartbreakers kick, “Visiting Hours” rips into deliciously upbeat new wave a la Elvis Costello and the Attractions with helpings of Branan’s distinctive pathos and punk heart that surely Costello would’ve been happy to call his own in the glory days of Armed Forces. Shades of Springsteen pop up elsewhere as well, perhaps most noticeably in the River/Tunnel of Love vibe of the absolute knockout centerpiece “The Vow,” written in honor and praise of Branan’s deceased father. Even amongst all the other gems packed throughout Adios, “The Vow” and the late-album stunner of a duet “Don’t Go” (featuring Amanda Shires) each pack enough gut-punch power, pulsating life, and stop-you-in-your-tracks beauty to conjure feelings akin to reading some Great American Novel edited down to a five-minute song. What else can you possibly ask for from a rock and roll record these days? Well, if that’s a blistering, mad-as-hell, punk protest anthem to spit piss and ire at corruption and brutality rallying around a pogoing, poppy chorus befitting of the Ramones, Branan also has you covered on that front with “Another Nightmare in America.”

Adios is already a record I’ve eagerly lived with and obsessed over for weeks. It’s a towering achievement in an already strong year of rock records. Here’s to obsessing over it more in the months to come, with the speakers blasting, drinks in hand and lovers and friends close by to combat the dread of all the wretched shit clinging to the coattails of all those wolves just outside the door.

Adios is out April 7, 2017 via Bloodshot Records.

Hurray for the Riff Raff - The Navigator

The Navigator, the sixth album from Alynda Segarra under her moniker Hurray for the Riff Raff, is a rapturous statement of the personal and political at an exact moment when such considerations almost seem like the only things that really matter. It’s a rich, versatile and vital album brimming with a borderless sense of empathy and rhythm. At its core is a song cycle built around “The Navigator” – an alter ego named Navita Milagros Negrón – and her journey for a sense of home, love and meaning after hardships and wayward detours. Such was the journey for Segarra since gaining critical acclaim and touring in support of Hurray for the Riff Raff’s previous album, Small Town Heroes. Segarra departed from her residence and musical home in New Orleans back to the Bronx of where she grew up.

 

The album is a world of multicultural life and interconnectedness much like the look and feel of the people and neighborhoods Segarra grew up around. The song “Living in the City” fully immerses the listener in the album’s atmosphere with Segarra’s evocative chronicling of high-rise ruminations, rooftop views, dead gypsies and red-blooded life. Touches of Patti Smith, Rodriguez (both of which Segarra has referenced as inspirations), Buena Vista Social Club and folk-soul luminaries and street poets come to mind throughout The Navigator, but it’s not hard to hear how urgent every moment of this music is and how all of it is wholly inseparable from Segarra. Amongst mentions of the heart being a lonely hunter and concrete jungles, there is an honest, soulful filter of liberal empathy and proud heritage that anchors the journey. Compared to anything on the radio and most things released recently, The Navigator sounds like it is in its own passionate world, and it’s a world that should feel near and dear to many. Stocked with minor-key piano, guitar licks, samba and Puerto Rican rhythms, and doo wop flourishes, it is a Hurray for the Riff Raff concept album that plays out somewhat like a classic big-screen musical, especially if said musical bares its heart with sensibilities closer to Moonlight or Do the Right Thing rather than, say, the polished Technicolor Hollywood nostalgia of La La Land. Segarra’s showstopper here is undoubtedly “Pa’lante,” The Navigator’s alternately mournful and fiery six-minute climax that borrows its name from the radical group the Young Lords, pays structural homage to The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” and includes a recorded bridge of the poet Pedro Pietri’s “The Puerto Rican Obituary.” The song is a manifesto of empowerment and a call to arms for solidarity, and Segarra’s voice is utterly commanding. If there is one song to be taken away from The Navigator as a standalone totem it is “Pa’lante,” but its principles and genuine, human emotion are etched into every groove throughout the entire record. From the sturdy roots backbones of “Nothing’s Gonna Change That Girl” and “Life to Save” to the societal laments of “Rican Beach” and “Halfway There,” the striving American underdog spirit (unrestricted by ethnicity and gender) soars along between hard times and high times.

With The Navigator, Hurray for the Riff Raff has created a work of art to be celebrated: a personal triumph that is deeply relatable, a purely musical gem, and an impeccably performed, expertly arranged and sequenced song cycle that is unquestionably of the moment, is aware of what all that came before, and is still defiantly optimistic for what is ahead.

 

Hurray for the Riff Raff’s The Navigator (released March 10, 2017) is out now via ATO Records.