If you haven’t started to pay attention to the Australian music scene this is your heads up. Whatever is going on within the confines of the country is shaping a musical landscape that cannot be ignored any longer.
The Murlocs’ upcoming new album Rapscallion sees them forging into new territory with a playful mix of drama and effervescence as they give us a loosely conceptual coming-of-age story of searching, love, loss, independence and belonging. There’s effortlessly catchy garage-rock groovers that we’ve come to love from The Murlocs, along with detours into chaotic heavy moments and unabashedly cool drifts into fruitful synth work that will pleasantly surprise listeners.
SIMON: We mentioned you wrote these songs during the early pandemic, and I gather your house was very full at that time, right?
FURMAN: It was a bit full. It was me and my gay wife and our 1-year-old. And then our friend just had a shaky kind of housing situation, and she moved into our living room for months. And then also we had this terrible landlord who lived right upstairs from us who was – well, he was prejudiced, you know? He was not happy that I was transgender when we moved in. So there was a lot of love in our house. And then there was this, like, overhang of transphobia.
King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard took to their official Instagram account to share their plans to release three new albums this October. While the official release date was not revealed, the band did note that pre-orders will begin on Sept. 7 on gizzverse.com.
Keeping track of all the new albums coming out in a given month is a big job, but we’re up for it: Below is a comprehensive list of the major releases you can look forward to in September. If you’re not trying to potentially miss out on anything, it might be a good idea to keep reading.
One of Bikini Kill’s best songs is one of their most overlooked. In two and a half minutes, “Outta Me” packs in more emotional nuance than the band usually left room for. Riot grrrl has meant, and continues to mean, many things to many people. But when I think about the central tension of being a woman trying to move through the world, “bein’ in love,” “bein’ in hate,” and just feeling fucking bled dry often seems like the right way to put it. But that’s probably just how everyone feels. “Outta Me,” in its bittersweet efficiency, transcends riot grrrl, it but also sort of defines it — if anything ever could.
The ’90s are back. No, not the summer temperatures but choker necklaces, flannel shirts, skater jeans and riot grrrl pioneers Bikini Kill. The influential feminist punk rock band sprouted from the fertile Olympia grunge/punk soil in the early 1990s and played its last show in Tokyo in 1997, after three albums and a career as fiery, exhilarating and concise as their songs — which rage against the sexist machine. The band, whose “girls to the front” credo ignited a movement, announced a Pacific Northwest reunion tour in November of 2019. (We all know what happened next.) The rescheduled Bikini Kill tour makes its final stop in Marymoor, one of the few shows that have not sold out – yet.
Today’s Song of the Day is “Compos Mentis” from The Murlocs’ album, Rapscallion, out now.
Ezra Furman has seemingly spent her last two albums in constant motion. She first traced a collection of Springsteen-esque stories of escape and romance songs with 2018’s Transangelic Exodus, then quickly offered up an incendiary punk paen to rage and fury with 2019’s Twelve Nudes. Her songs have often felt restless and nervy, finding her searching for peace and comfort amidst a hostile world that doesn’t want Furman or the people she loves to exist.
The third installment of a trilogy that began in 2018 with the transformative road-trip opus Transangelic Exodus, All of Us Flames sees Ezra Furman deliver a disarming and defining set of punk-kissed heartland indie rock songs that give a bullhorn to marginalized voices.
Ezra Furman knows that the joys and fears of trans women are doubled to either extreme compared to those of their cis counterparts, as violent transmisogyny continues to run rampant and women who share her experiences are forced to live in the shadows.
This Chicago artist’s sixth album is a strong set of dramatic indie-rock incorporating elements of heartland rock and other styles, combining shimmering synths, guitars, piano and more with her grainy vocals and sharply crafted lyrics depicting self-love and connection as antidotes to bigotry and isolation.
Singer-songwriter Ezra Furman has been creating rock and roll tunes since 2008, originally being a part of Ezra Furman and the Harpoons before moving on to sing solo.
Returning to familiar sounds of vintage girl groups and rock’n’roll, Ezra Furman writes trans pride and existential fear into an album that reveals the full strength of her vulnerabilities.
It’s rare nowadays to find sincere protest music worth listening to. Even those elite artists who do make legitimately radical statements in their songs — Downtown Boys, Moor Mother, Special Interest, et al. — mix their full-throated activism with experiments in form. But on her recent single “Book Of Our Names,” Ezra Furman takes a direct swing at capitalism in the style of the earnest folk rockers who shook the structures of power over half a century ago.
Track by Track is our recurring feature series that provides artists with a space to take us through every song on their newest release. Today, Ezra Furman takes us through the powerful All of Us Flames.
In terms of both the joyful force it exudes and the restrictive forces imposed upon it, femininity is inherently violent. Going back to the earliest examples of mythology, you can usually find some reference to an orderly, masculine representation of the sun, serving as a foil to the chaos of the moon that forcibly bends the tides and weather to its will under the cover of night.
Indie Basement’s quiet but very hot August continues, and this week includes: the swaggering debut album from Speedy Wunderground-signed The Lounge Society; new DFA signees JJULIUS; cinematic guitarist Rachika Nayar; Ezra Furman finds empathy at the edge of the apocalypse; Pantha du Prince gets one with nature; and ’90s electronica producer William Orbit returns with his first album in eight years featuring Beth Orton and more.
The full range and complicated range of human emotions has always been part of Furman’s creativity — especially anger, which was mined extensively in Furman’s last album, 2019’s punk blowout Twelve Nudes. Before that was 2018’s Transangelic Exodus, an album that constantly felt like its music had been set ablaze in honor of the agony and ecstasy of queerness, as well as to process the understanding that “sometimes you go through hell, but you never get to Heaven.”
Furman added: “I wanted to make songs for use by threatened communities, and particularly the ones I belong to: trans people and Jews.”
The singer-songwriter concludes a trilogy of albums that included 2018’s Transangelic Exodus and 2019’s Twelve Nudes. The new project, Furman says, is “a queer album for the stage of life when you start to understand that you are not a lone wolf, but depend on finding your family, your people, how you work as part of a larger whole.”
Ezra Furman knows that the joys and fears of trans women are doubled to either extreme compared to those of their cis counterparts, as violent transmisogyny continues to run rampant and women who share her experiences are forced to live in the shadows.
Ezra Furman has released a new album, All of Us Flames, today via ANTI-/Bella Union. Now that it’s out you can stream the whole thing here. Stream the album below, followed by her upcoming tour dates.
On All of Us Flames, her sixth solo album, Ezra Furman completes a three-album story arc about queer agency and fury.
EZRA FURMAN, ALL OF US FLAMES. The trans rocker’s latest finds her skillfully brooding her way through songs about the internal support of queer communities in times of crisis.
Hello! It’s Friday, again! There’s new music out there, again. I’ve got Tiny Blue Ghost a band nearby to me on a label I like and I’ve been really enjoying all the songs they’ve put out this year. There’s also this Stella Donnelly to check out based on reviews, also this Cryalot album I don’t think I’ve heard of but I love KKB.
Ezra Furman released a new album, All of Us Flames, today via ANTI-/Bella Union (stream it here). All of Us Flames includes “Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club,” one of its highlights that wasn’t put out as a pre-release single but is now eligible for Songs of the Week.
