The Past Is Still Alive

As a soundtrack to watching those flames flicker, it doesn’t come much better than The Past Is Still Alive.

The Past Is Still Alive is a remarkable album, one which achieves the impossible trick of capturing the mood of a nation and a vivid portrait of a single fascinating person – all within one gorgeous stew.

Underneath the burnished surface, the album is every bit as vital as its predecessors, examining situations fraught with private and political pitfalls.

The music is deceptively complex in its simplicity. The individual tracks always carry us to places we didn’t know we were heading.

Their tunesmithery is crystalline, their lyricism freewheeling yet precisely penned, and their voice as evocative yet relaxed as ever.

The Past Is Still Alive’s fantastical yet sharply observed writing and revival of a more traditional sound feels like a homecoming.

There are words of love for suicidal addicts (Alibi) and a sense of the distance travelled, while remaining constant: an outlier whose solidarity with the runaways and the marginalised endures.

Nestled amongst some of her most nuanced and carefully placed moments of Americana and joined by a host of backing singers and musicians from Connor Oberst to Hand Habits‘ Meg Duffy, Segarra manages to take solace in the fact that while we are victims of our formative years, there is always scope to heal.

But if Life On Earth still felt intent on defining itself in part by what it was not, The Past is Still Alive achieves something even braver: Segarra has honed their craft into a cohesive, astonishingly realized singer-songwriter record.

It doesn’t just sound like wild west Americana — it feels that way, drawn from a life’s worth of experience and adoration of the genre. It’s the album that Segarra’s been building toward since they first picked up a guitar.

There's an ever-growing sense that Segarra is in a class above in terms of poignant lyricism and emotive performance – The Past Is Still Alive reaffirms this in spades.

Clearly, this is the crowning jewel of Hurray for the Riff Raff’s catalog, and surely their most honest, cathartic songwriting.

Heavy though it is, the songwriting remains remarkably light and agile. [Mar 2024, p.88]

Despite confronting such daunting themes as grief, addiction, and identity, The Past Is Still Alive rarely feels heavy. Much of this owes to Segarra’s reliably triumphant outlook in the face of adversity. .... Credit also goes to producer and co-engineer Brad Cook, who helps couch Segarra’s words in unfussy Americana that’s easy on the ear.