Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra captures a sophisticated actuality on their new track, “Colossus of Roads.”

Tommy Kha/Courtesy of the artist

cover caption

toggle caption

Tommy Kha/Courtesy of the artist

Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra captures a sophisticated actuality on their new track, “Colossus of Roads.”

Tommy Kha/Courtesy of the artist

8 Tracks is your antidote to the algorithm. Every week, NPR Music producer Lars Gotrich, with the assistance of his colleagues, makes connections between sounds throughout time.

Bob Dylan‘s The Lyrics, Lou Reed‘s I will Be Your Mirror, Joni Mitchell‘s Full Poems and Lyrics, Yale College Press’ The Anthology of Rap — it is solely in the previous few many years that e-book publishers have begun to deal with lyrics as an artwork type in itself. So once I noticed that Oxford American, a famend literary journal, printed the lyrics to 2 new Hurray for the Riff Raff songs, I let loose just a little cheer. Alynda Segarra examines our frailty and resilience with an unsparing, but tender cadence — their music, at all times evolving, responds to the contour of their phrases.

Listed here are eight not too long ago launched tracks — plus a throwback — with lyrics that stand on their very own as poetry.

Hurray for the Riff Raff, “Colossus of Roads”

Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra has proven us their poetic energy from fights for justice to radical revolutions of relationship, however right here captures a sophisticated actuality. “Colossus of Roads,” named for boxcar graffiti artist buZ blurr who only recently handed, threads a tough needle: how we discover love, security and inspiration in queer and outsider areas, that are underlined by threats of violence. A dusty association of guitar, pedal metal and an out-of-tune piano tumbles together with a chorus-less ramble — the type of heart-full-but-heartbroken twang that rings your soul. “I do know that it is harmful, however I wanna see you undress,” they sing. “Wrap you up within the bomb shelter of my feather mattress.”

Rosie Tucker, “All My Exes Stay in Vortexes”

This is a selected taste of despair: Plastic and shopper waste anxiousness candy-coated in a sugary pop-punk shell… oh, and the reminiscence of a relationship gone improper caught to the wrapper. Rosie Tucker‘s earworm songwriting is concise and compact, layering harmonies judiciously, however their not-so-secret weapon is a tragi-comic swirl that factors the fingers at capitalist fatalism as a lot as themselves. “I hope nobody needed to piss in a bottle at work to get the factor I ordered on the web,” they sing, solely to return one verse later with a vengeance: “I do know each time you sip from a bottle of piss and keep in mind me the reminiscence degrades.”

Benny the Butcher, “TMVTL”

Benny the Butcher raps like Jorge Fornés attracts comics: Thick brushstrokes in some way each cloak and reveal hidden intentions. “A number of his music is in regards to the grind,” my colleague Sheldon Pearce mentioned on NPR’s New Music Friday podcast, “about striving and pushing and aspiring for extra, however he by no means loses sight of all that was left in his wake.” Benny’s usually an Album Expertise, however I am notably drawn to “TMVTL” from All people Cannot Go. Three totally different tales in three verses, separated by three totally different beats through The Alchemist, but it is clear that Benny desires us to attach the sins of those streets, together with his personal: “I am from the place tragedy made us strengthen and casualties do not make a distinction.”

Sunny Day Actual Property, “Novum Vetus”

An historic knowledge haunts Sunny Day Actual Property‘s first new track in a decade. Initially conceived in 1997, “Novum Vetus” waltzes with existential marvel, not not like the music discovered on 1998’s How It Feels to Be One thing On, the emo band’s celestial masterpiece. Jeremy Enigk, Dan Hoerner and William Goldsmith completed the track with new members for Diary – Stay at London Bridge Studio. Like its Latin title, which suggests “all the pieces previous is new once more,” Enigk leans right into a previous reminiscence with grace: “Far faraway from the injuries, they nonetheless breathe,” he sings, his illuminated rasp now a richer hue. “Each open door is a world turned on its aspect.”

NØ MAN, “Glitter and Spit”

Existence breeds exhaustion. NØ MAN, which is principally the following lifetime of D.C. screamo OGs Majority Rule, offers vocalist Maha Shami area to howl her experiences as a lady and, most poignantly, because the daughter of Palestinian refugees. “Glitter and Spit” alternates between blackened crust riffs and gothic post-punk melody, however by no means removes the tooth from the jowl. And but, Shami screams to be seen greater than a “bomb risk, coated in glitter and spit.”

Low, “Phrases”

In fascinated about how lyrics can stand on their very own, I got here again to Low‘s 1994 debut, I Might Stay in Hope. That is when the band had a repute for gradual, minimalist indie rock, but a lot occurs in these moments that linger. Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker give us a glimpse, however not the entire image of a “man in a field” who “desires to burn my soul.” Is the person a fire-and-brimstone preacher? Is that this a courtroom drama? There are clues, however no solutions. It is beautiful, creepy and surprisingly threatening. And maybe a bit tongue in cheek as Sparhawk repeats a self-aware mantra: “Too many phrases, too many phrases.”

Unhealthy Tuner, “24 hours”

For those who grew up within the ’90s — or discovered your method again there by way of TikTok — this dance observe’s outrageous Huge Beat manufacturing will sound acquainted: Assume The Chemical Brothers or The Prodigy, digital artists with bomb-tossed hip-hop beats and a high-energy home pulse. Like Daft Punk earlier than him, Unhealthy Tuner takes a easy phrase and builds a world round its incantatory properties. At first, its incessant repetition is obnoxious, however turns into a graffiti-worthy rallying cry to stand up: “In 24 hours, the world might be ours.”

Megan Thee Stallion, “HISS”

Meg‘s master-level takedown shall be studied by diss observe historians for ages to come back. Bloggers, YouTube personalities, exes and wannabe exes driving on Meg’s fame and title — nobody is proof against Meg’s venom, one who spits, usually in couplets, just like the Bard of Houston: slicing, crafty and humorous abruptly. To wit, Meg juxtaposes Mariah Carey‘s early 2000s beef with Eminem (which she received) with a sure intercourse tape: “I really feel like Mariah Carey, obtained these n***** so obsessed / My p**** so well-known, would possibly get managed by Kris Jenner subsequent.” However the devastation leveled at Nicki Minaj — the principle character of Meg’s vitriol — is one thing else fully, greatest defined by my colleague Sidney Madden, however summed up in a single line: “These hoes do not be mad at Megan, these hoes mad at Megan’s Regulation.” Nicki responded by rhyming foot with foot; it have to be mentioned, The Shaggs did higher by ft.