Hurray for the Riff Raff Bring Intimate Energy to House of Blues

On April 4, 2024, I attended Hurray for the Riff Raff’s show in the Voodoo Room at House of Blues. They played an energetic and competent set, even if the show felt minimal in lieu of the emotional vulnerability of the band’s music.

Hurray for the Riff Raff have been around for a while. Alynda Segarra, the band’s frontperson, put out their first music under the name nearly two decades ago, steadily releasing albums every few years since. I was first introduced to their music in 2022 with their streamlined, synth-rock-inspired album Life on Earth. On that record, Segarra’s voice was louder than ever over instrumentals that sounded cleaner and higher fidelity than anything Hurray for the Riff Raff had put out before.

While Life on Earth hooked me into the rest of Segarra’s discography, I welcomed the rougher, country-inspired sounds of Hurray for the Riff Raff’s newest album, 2024’s The Past is Still Alive. On The Past is Still Alive, Segarra sings mostly of personal histories, evaluating their past, of train hopping and eating “out of the garbage,” and how it affects their present.

Tracks from this latest record made up the bulk of their set. Segarra came on stage around 9:00 p.m. and played a roughly hour-long set. Their opener was Sen Morimoto, a jazzy, bedroom pop artist who performed a chill set. His music was pleasant in a new age, ephemeral way—the sort of reverbed synth music and falsetto singing that evokes the cosmos but threatens to become as common as the night sky. Still, Morimoto’s saxophone playing was something to behold and the older millennial-leaning audience welcomed him with applause and cheers.

Once Hurray for the Riff Raff were on stage, they blitzed quickly into “Alibi,” the opening track of The Past is Still Alive. They played it precisely; from the vocals to the instrumentals, their live performance was difficult to distinguish from the studio recording. This would set a precedent for the rest of the set. The next song they played, “Buffalo,” was sung passionately and played just so; “Hawkmoon” got some of the audience lightly dancing and bobbing. Each was enjoyable and energetic, but their performances lacked the sense of play and chaos that distinguishes the best live acts.

Crowd banter was kept to a minimum. Between each track were small silences with Segarra usually just thanking the crowd. Around the middle of the set, they mentioned that they were distributing Narcan, an opioid overdose-reversing drug, for free in the back of the venue, which followed through on the reference to the drug on “Snake Plant (The Past is Still Alive).” Aside from that, the set was a pretty standard run-through of their new album, with one track from Life on Earth and a couple from their 2014 album Small Town Heroes to celebrate its tenth anniversary. Sometimes, the performance felt a little like just another gig. The crowd was certainly into it, though. Everyone around me mouthed the words throughout the show, swaying their heads, hard seltzer in hand. The energy was up for a late Thursday night and the opportunity to see the band, from what seemed like a crowd of longer-term fans, fueled the room.

The night’s peak was their live rendition of “Hourglass,” my favorite track from The Past is Still Alive. An otherwise simple, swaying ballad was transformed when Sagarra invited Sen Morimoto to accompany the band on saxophone. It was the only track where Sagarra put down their guitar. Morimoto added an extended solo in the middle of the last verse not present in the album version. By the time Sagarra got around to the final lines, “Then the moment’s over, and/Suddenly, a boulder is just sand/In an hourglass” they were clutching the mic with two hands, eyes closed and head pointed up. The crowd mimicked their body language, awash in the intimacy of the performance and the song. If nothing else, that moment encapsulated the vibe of the night: mellow and inviting. It made the night worth it.

Finnegan Bly is the Assistant Arts and Culture Editor for The Triton.