Hurray For The Riff Raff
Album: Look Out Mama
Label: Loose
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.myspace.com/hurrayfortheriffraff

Now here's a strange one, for the relevant website is annoyingly uninformative. It involved me in a fair amount of digging elsewhere even to be able to glean that Hurray For The Riff Raff is a band based in New Orleans, fronted by singer-songwriter Alynda Lee Segarra; they've been around since at least 2008, with (apparently) two self-released albums and a compilation to their credit already.

Look Out Mama is one of those sets that you just know deep down is going to make its mark and become a favourite spin but at first enthrals, perplexes and enrages in almost equal measure, for reasons that you can't quite fathom. The opening number, Little Black Star, mixes retro backporch gospel with swampy country, focused around Alynda's gently soulful, almost casually sensual voice; the title song is a plaintive yet defiant 12-bar entreaty with keening fiddle and piano to the fore and even a bit of lonesome yodelling to keep the wolves at bay. And the more the album progresses, the more you realise what an extraordinary voice Alynda has, and the more you feel able to enter into the band's at times distinctly curious but curiously satisfying blend of Americana, psych-country, surf, rockabilly and blues.

What's Wrong With Me has the authentic demeanour of one of those early-60s tough-yet-vulnerable pop-cum-doowop grooves, while Alynda's quavering yet sure delivery on Ramblin' Gal (backed only by a lone acoustic guitar) points the way towards the album's masterwork, Ode To John And Yoko, a decidedly impressive slice of melancholy psychedelica that quietly shows off Alynda's vocal capabilities against an increasingly disturbed soundtrack with backwards-twisted guitar and other hallucinogenic effects invading the narrative before the faux-bouncy coda. The antidote to this bitter pill is provided by the jangly beat vibe of Lake Of Fire, followed by the ghostly brooding Quicksilver-Doors groove of Riley with its doom-laden guitars, the lonesome steel-sodden Go Out On The Road and the queasy situational narrative of the album finale Something's Wrong that leaves you with that all-pervasive sense of disquiet.

All of this adds up to an extraordinary album, one that'll sure "see ya round the bend" as you get to know it on successive plays (of which there'll definitely be many!).

David Kidman