The Navigator

Segarra is skilled at identifying the shifting goalposts that immigrants have to live by, and staring past them. [Apr 2017, p.18]

Her boozy, morning-after croon is still gorgeous, but now there’s elements of Puerto Rican bomba and salsa, son cubano, doo-wop, and even the spoken-word poetry of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe she haunted as a teen. Her band has gone through a variety of lineups, but this one feels like a clean slate.

The Navigator knows in which direction to head. Hurray indeed.

Their jaunty Americana morphs from something lovely into something utterly essential.

The Navigator feels like a mighty, empowering antidote to 2017's many spiritual agonies. [May 2017, p.105]

A major leap forward for an artist whose previous work now seems like a warm-up for the dizzying heights The Navigator strives for, and often achieves.

There’s a lot to take in, but it’s worth the effort.

Certainly, this album feels richer than previous Hurray for the Riff Raff records, which all benefitted from the stripped-down aesthetic that often signifies authenticity in Americana, but this broadening of Segarra's scope hardly constitutes pandering.

Augmenting her folksy troubadour style with Latin percussion and an acappella group for that streetcorner-symphony flavour, she effectively expands the notion of Americana to accommodate another cultural strain alongside the usual blues and country influences.

The rhythms never let up, no matter how intimate the material, suggesting the pulsating cadences of city life.

[Navita] charts her course through destruction, indifference and the city sounds: doo wop, Lou Reed-y R&R, even indie rock. It's not until she stares clear-eyed at those closest to her that the way is clear: she's to honor her Latin and Caribbean roots in story and sound. [Apr 2017, p.96]

The Navigator evocatively captures the essence of the streets of New York's increasingly gentrified outer boroughs.

The question of identity is touched upon throughout the songs here (national, political, gender), but in terms of musical identity, Hurray for the Riff Raff know exactly who they are.

As an album, The Navigator’s musicality--both the melodic nature of its songs and its musical-like structure--highlight Segarra’s raw talent and growth as an artist. But if she set The Navigator to stage, like a slightly rockist sequel to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights, she might have even greater impact and success.

The record is proof positive that an artist is ever evolving, and change is never something to be feared. Her talent and prowess as a musician and artist remain proven, nay, reinforced, by the alternative direction she takes in The Navigator, and, while different from precedent, there is much to love in it for Hurray for the Riff Raff fans, both new and old.

These are not new themes, but Segarra's songs are a complex thicket of emotions, made traversable by her ability to craft a maxim, a hook and a bridge to a chorus.