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Feb 24, 2022Segarra has wound up with a distinctive album, one that operates equally skillfully on an emotional and intellectual level.
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Feb 17, 2022Segarra reaches, with stunning empathy, into the lives of people struggling with specific or universal hardships throughout and yet, crucially, these songs would be killer without the stories at the heart of them.
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Feb 24, 2022On Life On Earth, marginalized voices are amplified and given credence. Segarra is the kind of potent lyricist who can flesh out characters and scenes with just one or two lines, paint entire panoramic worlds within the succinct space of a song.
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Feb 18, 2022Life on Earth leaves questions lingering inside of you. Segarra’s melodies, some so beautiful that they seem to have existed forever, make them stay.
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Feb 18, 2022Overall, Life On Earth has plenty of strong music that shows how much Segarra’s artistry has evolved.
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Feb 17, 2022What matters are the travails we endure to appreciate goodness. Life on Earth is a journey through the former toward the latter, and a dazzling shift from Hurray for the Riff Raff’s roots to their present.
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Feb 21, 2022Life On Earth is a continuation of Hurray For The Riff Raff’s upward projection, ideally breaking her out to a larger listening audience, as Segarra’s voice dominates while musical surroundings ebb and flow in both natural and haunting fashion.
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Feb 21, 2022In swapping fiddles, banjo and slide guitar for synths, piano and dynamic guitars, Life On Earth invokes a true sense of step change, capturing Segarra moving into the spotlight with purpose and confirming herself to be an artist ready to embrace newfound opportunities.
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Feb 21, 2022A brace of great tunes make the case: Rhododendron nods at Jonathan Richman’s Roadrunner, somehow making wildflowers sound gloriously disreputable. Saga, meanwhile, is a traumatised ballad that channels David Bowie, but with acoustic guitars and horns.
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MojoFeb 15, 2022Life On Earth is a compassionate, humane record at a time when it can only be a gift. [Mar 2022, p.78]
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UncutFeb 15, 2022Without sacrificing urgency, outrage or compassion, Alynda Lee Segarra gives these story-songs a light touch musically, favouring airy, even breezy arrangements driven by insistent drumbeats. [Mar 2022, p.31]
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Feb 15, 2022Some songs feature snippets of spoken word dialogues and other musical accompaniment, but as a whole, the album offers an intimacy between Segarra and her audience. Segarra is the voice crooning in your ear.
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Feb 15, 2022The album takes the listener on a journey—one that’s as satisfying as it is because Hurray for the Riff Raff covers so much new musical territory with such self-assuredness, from guitar-heavy indie rock (“Pointed at the Sun”) to folk-punk (“Rhododendron”) to hip-hop (“Precious Cargo”). Indeed, with Life on Earth, they’ve achieved something truly enviable: a fresh start.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 11 out of 11
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Mixed: 0 out of 11
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Negative: 0 out of 11
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Mar 18, 2022