With lyrics that roll off the tongue and unravel in the ear like a worm stuck in a whirlpool burrowing deep inside, The Past is Still Alive smarts.
From the liner notes:
There are love songs to real characters, locations and mythic figures like Sky Red Hawk (“Buffalo”); the first trans woman Segarra ever met (“Hawkmoon”); queerness and sacred spaces for outsiders and the vulnerable, in the aftermath of the Club Q shooting (“Colossus of Roads”); leaving home behind and discovering oneself on the edge of the world (“Snake Plant”); and short-lived romances and the wisdom gained through chaos (“Vetiver”). Elsewhere, in the self-portraits painted on “Alibi,” “Ogallala,” and other album highlights, Segarra reflects on the land they have traveled, the hardships witnessed, and bravery gained while running away from everything and everyone they knew at age seventeen, hopping freight trains and hitchhiking across the country with a band of street urchins.
Lives lived that we can only imagine yet conveyed with touching directness leaves me hanging on every sadness.
