The light at the Pinhook is seventeen kinds of suck, but Hurray for the Riff Raff were absolutely excellent; Alynda Lee Segarra has a startling voice, really reminiscent of Jolie Holland, almost too big for the small venue when she really let it go, and live the songs from Young Blood Blues are still conscious of their own space while at the same time gaining a complexity that should have required more than the three people on stage. Maybe people in Durham are just more polite than people elsewhere in the Triangle, or else they’re more laid back or something, but the good-sized crowd was absolutely rapt watching her, and with good reason: between Segarra’s voice and her ability to extract sounds from a banjo that I didn’t know a banjo could make, it was a night of music unlike any other I’ve heard this year.

It’s always a pleasure to watch a good musician work a room; Segarra does it effortlessly and completely, and the songs that sound simple and heartbreaking on her album sound huge and heartbreaking live.