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.
We all need to understand one thing; Ezra Furman is possibly an artist that’s the most unappreciated in our lifetime. The world needs to be covered in Furman releases because there’s nothing but quality work here. All Of Us Flames (ANTI-) is Ezra’s ninth full-length release, collaborative and solo, and possibly the most realized work to date.
1. Ezra Furman: “Point Me Toward the Real”
Ezra Furman has signed to ANTI- and on Tuesday shared her first single for the label, “Point Me Toward the Real.” She also announced some new North American tour dates. The horn-backed “Point Me Toward the Real” is about someone getting out of a psychiatric hospital. Furman’s lyrics paint a truly vivid picture.
This is one of those records that’s as naked as it can be in emotional terms, and yet still wildly enjoyable and tuneful as well. All of Us Flames, the new one from Ezra Furman, reveals the artist reaching a kind of peak here. The ANTI- / Bella Union release stands above and beyond so much of what’s come out this summer, showcasing a kind of serious rock, that’s still full of the sort of pleasures as the best classic rock or glam.
Ezra Furman appears to be in a constant state of escape. Her brand of soulful punk rock could be described as road music, with lyrics largely preoccupied with finding respite from a hostile world.
When the world was grappling with the anxiety and surreality of Covid in 2020, musician Ezra Furman also had to deal with being locked down with an openly transphobic landlord. “We did not conceal this at all, but he was like, ‘You didn’t tell me that you are trans’ and he was mad at us all the time and undermining,” Furman says solemnly over Zoom from Boston, wearing a pretty scooped-neck top, her hair cut in a bob. It didn’t help that the landlord lived upstairs. “It was just a horrible place to live.”
Never one known for her eagerness to submit to interviews, Kathleen Hanna was happy, she admitted on a recent afternoon, to be talking to anybody at all.
Ezra Furman: All of Us Flames • Julia Jacklin: Pre Pleasure • Muse: Will of the People • Regina Spektor: 11:11 • Stella Donnelly: Flood • William Orbit: The Painter
Why We’re Digging It: Australia has no shortage of great bands with outstanding songwriters, which explains why The Murlocs have and currently are touring with King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and have a solid following across the world. Ambrose Kenny-Smith, Cal Shortal, Cook Craig, Tim Karmouche, and Matt Blach are not the types to take shortcuts, choosing instead to use every second to entertain and provoke. With “Compos Mentis”, they deliver a slice of Americana, southern-rock made for road trips.
Inspired by Bob Dylan and the enduring girl groups of the 60s, Ezra Furman’s All of Us Flames is an Americana album for a country on the brink, and the people striving to make a better world out of the ashes.
Melbourne’s 60’s tinged psych-rock punks The Murlocs showcase their softer side with new “Compos Mentis” single & video. Speaking with FLOOD which debuted the track, frontman Ambrose Kenny-Smith explains: “After a long day of truck stop fights, hitchhiking and getting kicked off trains, our beloved rapscallion protagonist decides to spend the night in an abandoned junkyard. Finding peace within the garbage that surrounds him, he begins to question his purpose in life and whether or not he’s in control of his own mind.”
Today, Melbourne’s 60’s-tinged psych-rock punks The Murlocs (including members of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard) have shared “Compos Mentis,” the second single from their upcoming album Rapscallion, which is set to release on Sep 16 via ATO Records. The track, which was debuted by FLOOD Magazine this morning, shows the band’s softer side and plays into the introspective story-book feel of the record.
While Austin has long been keeping things weird with a healthy psych-rock scene, the Australian city of Melbourne has been creeping up as the psych capital of the world in recent years. Although The Murlocs came up at the same time as groups like The Black Angels and Night Beats, the band has consistently been winning over more listeners as they benefit from the wild success of groups like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, with whom they have overlapping members.
Melbourne’s 60’s tinged psych-rock punks The Murlocs showcase their softer side with new “Compos Mentis” single & video.
Speaking with FLOOD which debuted the track, frontman Ambrose Kenny-Smith explains: “After a long day of truck stop fights, hitchhiking and getting kicked off trains, our beloved rapscallion protagonist decides to spend the night in an abandoned junkyard. Finding peace within the garbage that surrounds him, he begins to question his purpose in life and whether or not he’s in control of his own mind.”
“After a long day of truck stop fights, hitchhiking and getting kicked off trains, our beloved rapscallion protagonist decides to spend the night in an abandoned junkyard,” says Murlocs frontman Ambrose Kenny-Smith.
The Murlocs’ sixth album Rapscallion is slated for a September 16, 2022 release through ATO Records. Self-produced by the band during the early stages of the pandemic, Rapscallion‘s 12 songs were recorded in the home studios of the band’s Kenny-Smith, Shortal, Blach, Cook Craig and Karmouche. Conceived and written as a coming-of-age novel in album form, the album’s material is partly inspired by Kenny-Smith’s adolescence as a nomadic skate kid.
Some days are better than others. Today is so great it’s almost ridiculous. In fact, if you don’t fall in love with at least 20 of these new singles, videos, cover tunes, remixes and unburied classics, I seriously think there might be something wrong with you. As always, there are dozens of gems here you can’t dig up anywhere else. Your Tinnitist-approved tracks are tagged with
There is no artist out there making music quite like Ezra Furman is. Her latest single, “Poor Girl a Long Way From Heaven,” Furman takes her trademark unique blend of indie rock and pop and injects a little bit of gospel or spiritual music into it. Furman’s music combines a vibe that is hers and hers alone with sounds that are almost familiar.
In today’s music world there are interesting acts coming out. The artist who has our interests lately is Ezra Furman. The trans artist is flowing forward on her new release, and writing songs that extend across people of all types.
In a press release, Furman elaborates on the new single: “The spiritual life ain’t all pious platitudes. This song is about how weird it gets, when you’re in love with the Source of Being and She’s not texting you back. Ever since it hit me that I was never going to be loved and accepted on the scale of my pop star heroes, me and my bandmates have started to work on a different vision of pop, one more our own, one that gestures at the stranger truths of the human mind. Here we are in thrall to verbally adventurous nineties music like Bjork and Beck and the Silver Jews and them kinda non-linear geniuses.”
The latest single from Ezra Furman’s new album All of Us Flames is “Poor Girl A Long Way From Heaven.” “The spiritual life ain’t all pious platitudes,” Ezra says.
Ezra Furman has shared a new single/video, “Poor Girl A Long Way From Heaven,” off of her forthcoming album, All of Us Flames, out August 26th via ANTI-/Bella Union. On “Poor Girl A Long Way From Heaven,” Furman recounts a childhood encounter with God, a gesture of spiritual yearning that flows into the album’s biblical facets.
