“No One Knows That You’re Lost is an album inspired by the Norwegian coast and a human interior, by tight itching doubts and wide open spaces. Here, fragility, strength and beauty become one and the same, parts of a landscape in constant flux yet remaining fundamentally unchanged”

Tina very kindly agreed to write a guest post for our ‘Lit Links‘ series (part of the Quiet, Constant Friends project), where artists and writers create a playlist of songs based around a book of their choice. Arm yourself with headphones and have a read below.

Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding
by Tina Refsnes

I’ve never felt comfortable with answering questions that ask for «the best» or «your all time favourite» as I just feel there’s too much good and different material in the world to hold them up against each other like that. So, I’ll say that one of my favourite books that I enjoyed immensely reading is one called The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. It’s set in an American College and with baseball as the back-drop, and it’s one of those slow books with great meaning but without the drama. It deals with the big hopes that young people usually have to life, with self doubt in performance, and with the social difficulties or shyness that young people sometimes struggle with. But, in a very down to earth way since, at least the main character, is so un-academic. I also imagined this suburban North-American setting for it: Long, wide streets with tall leaf trees on both sides of it. Really big and old campus buildings, and maybe since the characters were so alone in their minds I kept picturing everything as with never that many people around.

Tracklisting:

1. Jenny Come Home- Andy Shauf
   2. Gather, Form and Fly – Megafaun
   3. Own Side – Caitlin Rose
   4. Casimir Pulaski Day – Sufjan Stevens
   5. Easy – Laura Marling
   6. Blue Train – Emmy Lou Harris, Linds Ronstadt and Dolly Parton
   7. Out of the Woodwork – Courtney Barnett
   8. Big Black Road – Thousands
   9. That Knot Unties? – David Karsten Daniels
   10. Mr. Rodriguez – Rayland Baxter
   11. We Are Fine – Sharon Van Etten
   12. Horizons – The Staves
   13. Archie, Marry Me – Alvvays
   14. Friends – 22-20s
   15. Poison Oak – Bright Eyes

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Lyrically, Rough River is again close to the classics, using landscapes and natural imagery to paint tales of love, life, loss and grief. The current favourite line I have stumbled across so far is from ‘Sometimes’, which reads:

’And sometimes I can’t care to find 
what it is that makes me feel good about this life.
And I’ll float back to you
on a raft, steady and true,
and you say,
maybe it’s meant to be that way?’

You can buy the album via Bandcamp as a download or as a lovely limited-edition CD (designed by Sarah Hopfer).

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Her previous releases have received some rather impressive attention, with glowing reviews from The Times and Mojo, airtime on the BBC and use on HBO’s Treme. Look Out Mama, the new album out this week, looks to continue Segarra’s rise in the musical community. The main sense you get while hearing the music is one of timelessness. This may sound a tired cliché but with strong lyricism and a voice that wouldn’t be out of place alongside Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, a real sense of history runs through these songs. Maybe prior knowledge of Segarra’s back-story influences thinking but you can’t help but feel that this is someone who has experienced all of the songs, lived through something and written it down, rather than made up based on old ideas.

The beauty of the album is how they manage to evoke so many different images in each song. Opener ‘Little Black Star’ has links to her time in New Orleans and wouldn’t be out of place in the French Quarter, whereas ‘Lake of Fire’ is much more of a rock song with a surfy Californian jangle. ‘Riley’ (a personal favourite) is again completely different, a dark and foreboding song that always threatens to explode but never quite does, a beauty underpinned with a desolation and violence that brings to mind a journey across a Western mountain range. Look Out Mama captures America. Not the country of Starbucks and SUVs but rather that old enchanting, welcoming and dangerous land that still perseveres in many minds today. A place that I truly hope still exists.

Country music has a bit of a bad reputation (at least here in the UK) so there is real reluctance on my part to use that word here. Maybe ‘Roots’ is more appropriate? Is there a better term to describe music that captures all of those small nameless American towns? Wind and dust and mountains? Hurray For The Riff Raff (along with other acts such as Mount Moriah) show that with good songwriting and a bit of emotion, ‘Country’ does not have to be a derogatory term.

Look Out Mama is released today (20^th August) on Loose Music. We were lucky enough to get the chance to ask Alynda few questions so keep an eye out for them very soon.

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