Indie rockers Hurray for the Riff Raff won widespread acclaim for 2024’s The Past Is Still Alive album, on top of earlier praise for 2022’s Life on Earth. Both albums featured heartfelt, personal songs that courageously dared to critique America’s troubling decline, with singer/songwriter Alynda Segarra’s socially conscious perspective striking a chord with fans and critics alike.
Recorded over two sold-out nights last summer at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Segarra’s new hometown of Chicago, the 14-song Live Forever includes The Past Is Still Alive in its entirety plus a few other favorites from Hurray for the Riff Raff’s diverse songbook. A new video for the infectious folk-rock romp “Rhododendron” from Life on Earth serves as the live album’s first single, capturing the sensational sound the group were dishing out on tour.
“I wanted to capture this time and this brilliant band, a moment that won’t last forever. This record is a love letter to the working-class musicians out there, we who slug it out on the road against all odds. We deserve so much more from an industry built to exploit us. It’s a thank you to all the fans supporting live music, you who believe songs made by human beings are a vital life force,” Segarra explained in a press release announcing the live album’s release.
That brilliant band of players features Parker Grogan on electric guitar, who elevates songs like “Rhododendron” and the bluesy alt-country “Buffalo” to a transcendent level with his glistening slide guitar leads. Hurray For the Riff Raff also includes Nnamdi Ogbonnaya on bass and backing vocals, Marcus Drake on drums, and Sen Morimoto on saxophone and keyboards, all backing Segarra out front on acoustic guitar. Segarra further noted that they had relocated to Chicago in 2024 and that this new group was/is composed of musicians from the local DIY scene there who had been recommended by their front-of-house/production manager, Johnny Wilson (who also produced Live Forever).
After catching Hurray for the Riff Raff’s spring 2025 tour stop at the beautiful Sebastiani Theater in Sonoma, California, where the group’s vibrant sound shimmered with sparkling crystal clarity, this reporter felt like it was one of the best-sounding shows of recent years. Putting out a live album to document the tour is indeed a most worthy career move.
“Alibi” opens both Live Forever and The Past Is Still Alive with a bittersweet mid-tempo tune that pays homage to Segarra’s father, who had passed away shortly before recording for the studio album began. Segarra billed it as “a reckoning with time and memory”, a sentiment that could resonate with anyone who’s recently lost a family member or dear friend.
The energy level soars, as it did on the tour, with the iridescent combo of “Hawkmoon” and “Rhododendron”, featuring shimmering guitar chords and an upbeat vibe despite lyrical themes that speak to trials and tribulations. Segarra has described “Hawkmoon” as “a rebellious road song” that focuses on their first encounter with a trans woman, who became an inspirational friend and travel partner. “Rhododendron” was all over indie rock radio in early 2022, and it’s great to see the anthemic song featured again here, with its rocking progression that evokes the Velvet Underground.
Segarra has described “Rhododendron” as a song about “Being called by the natural world and seeing the life that surrounds you in a way you never have. A mind expansion. A psychedelic trip. A spiritual breakthrough. Learning to adapt, and being open to the wisdom of your landscape…”
The song is elevated by Parker Grogan’s electrifying slide guitar lines, which could make a listener want to crank up the volume and play it again since the soaring track ends after just four minutes (and feels like it could easily go twice as long). There’s also an underlying catharsis of digging deeper within to transcend personal difficulties, exemplified by Segarra’s emotional vocals when they sing, “Everything I have is gone / And I don’t know what it’ll take to carry on.”
“Colossus of Roads” is a downbeat yet zeitgeisty song as Segarra expresses a desire to “say goodbye to America, I wanna see it dissolve, I can be the poster boy for the great American fall”. Grogan’s slide guitar provides a subtle, yet high and lonesome sound that really brings out the bittersweet emotion of the song. Another key song is the memoirish “Snake Plant (The Past Is Still Alive)”, perhaps the first song ever to cite camping on a Superfund site (a reference to the EPA Superfund program that identifies the most toxic sites in America for cleanup, yet is filled with marginalized communities struggling for environmental justice at those sites).
Segarra continues to go deep on “Precious Cargo”, a unique song that uses a meditative trance beat to convey a story about an illegal immigrant seeking to cross the American border with her babies but getting apprehended by agents of the much-maligned ICE instead. The spoken word vocal style recalls Dylan inventing the concept on “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, as Segarra crafts a masterful narrative. Grogan’s atmospheric slide licks conjure desert borderlands under the stars, as Hurray for the Riff Raff transport listeners to that stark realm where desperate immigrants risk everything for a shot at a better life.
The newer “Pyramid Scheme” finds Hurray For the Riff Raff rocking again with a melodic tune that takes on internet scams and the tech oligarchy, as Segarra sings, “We all rode into your virtual town / With the intention just of burning it down.” It pairs well with “Vetiver”, an upbeat rocker where Grogan’s slide guitar is out front for an energetic attack.
Morimoto gets a big sax solo on “The World Is Dangerous”, adding a cool jazzy tone to the bluesy ballad as he and Grogan intertwine their melodies during the solo section. There’s more sax on “Hourglass”, making for a noirish combo of sorts as Segarra sings of longing to move on from difficult feelings of the past.
The bluesy vibe deepens on the heartfelt “Ogallala” as Segarra sings of previously thinking they were “born into the wrong generation”, but now realizing they “made it right on time… to watch this world burn with a tear in my eye.” There’s a powerful jam with guitar trills and saxophone conjuring the sound of that collapse, before Segarra spins it around at the end by singing of meeting “in the garden”.
The record concludes in climactic fashion with “Pa’lante”, an anthemic song from 2017’s The Navigator in which Segarra sings about their Puerto Rican heritage, the xenophobia and neocolonialism faced in America, and the universal desire to move forward while “searching for my lost humanity.” The outro jam features Hurray For the Riff Raff at full power, cranking out a big sound behind Segarra as they repeat the title like an empowering mantra with triumphant sax and guitar lines to boost the energy level for a big crescendo.
“Pa’lante” was cited by Billboard in 2019 as one of the top 100 “defining songs” of that decade, with Segarra saying, “This song gives me the energy I need to stay calm, stay grounded and to continue on. We need to imagine a better future. Right now, there’s a lot of mystery and a lot of darkness.” That darkness has only deepened since Donald Trump was allowed to return to power by an establishment that inexplicably failed to punish the sedition of 6 January 2021.
It was, therefore, inspiring to see Segarra called on to perform “Pa’lante” for Democracy Now’s 30th anniversary celebration in March, demonstrating how independent news and indie rock can make a fitting combination. The team-up was also a testament to how Alynda Segarra and Hurray for the Riff Raff remain one of the defining voices of the 2020s, as clearly captured on Live Forever.