Alynda Lee Segarra is a young woman with such a natural talent that it doesn't seem out of place to speak of her as being a successor to well established artists like Lucinda Williams, Cat Power and Gillian Welch.
She's a Puerto Rican who grew up in the Bronx , ran away from home at 17 and eventually settled in New Orleans. Inspired by the vibrant musical scene she found there, she learnt to play guitar, write songs and hooked up with like-minded musicians.
Her odd choice of band name can be read as an ironic statement of intent, designed to turn the marginalized status of down at heel outsiders like her into a cause for celebration.
This name is flawed in my view because, like the album cover depicting of a soldier holding a machine gun, it tends to give a misleading impression of the music.
The reason for choosing this picture is partially explained in the sleeve notes where Segarra writes that being the daughter of a Vietnam veteran helped strengthen her commitment to peace. Somewhat bizarrely, she omits to mention that the photograph is of her father aged 19.
However, I have no such misgivings about the quality of the music. Take, for example, the way Segarra pours her experience into a song like Ramblin' Gal.
Sounding much older and wiser than her twenty five years, she sings of being drawn to the open road, addressing the familiar dilemma of having to choose between the relative security of home and a life drifting down lost highways.
It's a song that hovers between despair and hope and continues a musical conversation than began when Hazel Dickens wrote Ramblin' Woman as a direct response to Hank Williams Ramblin' Man.
It shows her instinctive ability to blend personal details with well established themes from traditional folk roots. In this way she brings a measure of authenticity to material which, in less assured hands, can easily sound tired or contrived.
The album, recorded by Andrija Tokic in his Nashville studio home (The Bomb Shelter), opens in rousing fashion with Little Black Star, a swamp pop version of John Jacob Niles' Appalachian ballad. This is followed by the equally affirmative title track complete with yodelling with defiant 'I will survive' lyrics: "you can tell by the way I look I won't be wandering no more".
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Both these upbeat songs are enhanced by the prominent fiddle playing from Yosi Perlstein. Although traditional country folk instruments lie at the heart of the band's sound, this varied collection of songs takes in other genres too.
What's Wrong With Me is like a classic slice of Motown soul, Lake Of Fire is described as an "apocalyptic surf love song" and Ode To John And Yoko lives up to its title by paying tribute to Lennon and Ono with some Beatle-esque psychedelic pop.
More conventional alt-country can be heard on Riley, a dark atmospheric song of love and betrayal ("I wait like the reaper in my cloak of black") and Go Out On The Road is a homage to the kind of classic honky tonk tune Patsy Cline made her own.
Born To Win (Part 1) echoes Segarra's advice to young women "to keep your heads up and hearts open" while the album's closing track Something's Wrong is a tribute to her adopted home town of New Orleans as it continues to struggle to come to terms with the devastation reaped by Hurricane Katrina.
All in all then, this is a record to warm the heart and raise the spirits. The moral of the tale being that, in life as in art, you should never underestimate the riff raff.
Hurray For The Riff Raff's website
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