Ezra Furman can’t slow down. The singer-songwriter’s latest album “Perpetual Motion People“ finds him darting between moods and genres like a pendulum gone haywire. “I’m restless in most aspects,” Furman once said in a press release, but one thing he’s not is aimless. He knows that identity is a fluid construct, so he splices together his own from the fragments of others, infusing well-worn pop melodies with an urgency that speaks to what it’s like to be young and weird and still working things out. In other news, Furman has been announced as the author of theupcoming 33.1/3rd book series on the classic album “Transformer” by Lou Reed. A lifelong Reed fan, Furman was a natural choice to pen this latest title of the influential book series, set to be published sometime in 2018.
Furman has just announced an extensive 2016 US tour to support Perpetual Motion People, and the announcement comes with a surprise of its own: a new track entitled “The Prisoner”. This song is the B-side to sunny punk single “Restless Year”, and it embodies all of the contradictions that make Furman’s music so compelling. A twangy acoustic guitar and vaudevillian piano line combine to create a rollicking, exuberant mood that’s immediately undermined when Furman starts to sing. “I am a prisoner in the basement of this house,” he yelps, “and I wouldn’t trade it, not for all the world.” It’s Stockholm syndrome in the form of a pop song — manic and macabre, dark but undeniably danceable.
The Guardian UK calls Chicago native Ezra Furman “the most compelling live act you can see right now.” He counts Iggy Pop among his fans and is a critical darling in the U.S. and the UK.
The Fat Angel Sings 