If It's Too Loud...

I was embarrassingly late getting into Ezra Furman. Of course, I had heard of Ezra Furman and heard of her music, but things just didn't click for me until this year. An absolutely life changing live show at Crystal Ballroom in June changed everything, and as the singles for All of Us Flames were released, I got more and more excited for the album. According to Wikipedia, Furman's musical styles are art pop, alternative pop, indie pop, and indie folk. Her music is all of those styles, but it is also just more. The songs on All of Us Flames don't really fit any specific genre. She just weaves from musical style to musical style between songs and often within the same song. This is the kind of album that feels completely unique while also feeling strangely familiar. The songs on the album have elements of indie rock, doo wop, classic rock, folk, 80's New Wave... Furman's music is truly without genre. The more time you spend with this album the more you'll be rewar...

Photo by Tonje Thilesen 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. "Poor Girl a Long Way From Heaven" has an interesting 1980's Madonna goes modern indie rock feel, which mostly comes from Furman's delivery. There aren't many (or truly, any) indie artists out there today that are going to remind you of gospel and Madonna, but that's the beauty of Ezra Furman. Ezra Furman says of her 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 sta...

Photo by Tonje Thilesen The latest from Ezra Furman is what we've come to expect from the artist. "Lilac and Black" is a virtually genre-less song that borrows from many different styles while sounding entirely unique. There are elements of folk, pop, dance, punk, and all the multi-hyphenate genres in between, but it doesn't truly sound like any of those. It's a little too electronic to be rock, but too rock to be electronic. Plus, despite being about Furman's "queer girl gang" taking over a city from their oppressors, the song isn't as punk as you'd expect. It starts off quite quiet and contemplative. It does build and get more rock as it goes on, but the music never matches the venom in Furman's voice. Ezra Furman says of her new song: “I’ve started to think of us trans women as a kind of secret gang, scattered across the world. Or that we could be that. So I wrote this theme song for us, and gave us some gang colors: lilac and black. U...