Photo by Sarrah Danziger.

Listen to Hurray For The Riff Raff’s new album, “The Navigator”

Hurray for the Riff Raff’s long-awaited follow-up to 2014’s Small Town Heroes is slated for release on March 10 via ATO Records. However, fans of the New Orleans-based singer-songwriter—whose real name is Alynda Lee Segarra—whose music is as perceptive as it is poetic, will be happy to hear that the full album is now available today via NPR’s First Listen.

Titled The Navigator, the new record is a concept album that “tells an interwoven, cinematic story of a wandering soul at a crossroads of identity and ancestral weight. It finds a street kid named Navita traversing a perpetually burning city in search of herself.” With it’s latin rhythmic influences and compositional complexity, the record also represents a bit of a musical departure for Hurray for the Riff Raff, though Segarra’s socially and emotionally conscious lyrics still take center stage. This musical shift is bolstered by a variety of talented new collaborators, including guitarist Jordan Hyde, percussionists Juan-Carlos Chaurand and Gregory Rogove (Rodrigo Amarante), and a trio of Bomba drummers.

In the lead review for the latest issue of OffBeat, John Swenson noted that, “The music ranges from the kind of folk ballads that her longtime fans will recognize in songs like ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change That Girl’ and ‘Halfway There’ to a daring mix of salsa, rap and rock featured on the title track, ‘Rican Beach’ and ‘Finale.’” He then added, “some of Segarra’s fans are uneasy with the new direction, but her ability to reach back and write about her life before traveling to New Orleans is a powerful sign of artistic growth. Segarra is incorporating clavé rhythms and Puerto Rican dialect into her songs, but she clearly is building on rather than abandoning the lessons she learned on the streets of New Orleans.”

You can give The Navigator a listen via NPR