Ms Ezra Furman is coming to Brighton Dome to play without her full band, doing whatever she wants, performing who knows what, and we couldn’t be more excited.
Many people may have unwittingly heard Liz through the soundtrack of the popular ‘Sex Education’ on Netflix, noticing some extraordinarily beautiful and on-point songs accompanying this rather wonderful series, but she’s been releasing albums for two decades now, each one a quite brilliant collection of deeply personal, intelligent, self-referential and reflective songs, propped up by some gorgeous indie rock’n’roll.
At the Dome, she’ll bring an electric guitar and keyboards rather than the full band. If you want an idea of what to expect, well be prepared for the unexpected, but you could get some idea by listening to Power Of The Moon from her latest and most excellent album ‘Goodbye Small Head’ below
‘Goodbye Small Head’ is Ezra Furman’s tenth album and whilst they are well known for having been ‘on a a journey’ there’s been a consistency in the strength of both the quality of their songwriting and the punkish-but-tuneful indie aesthetic that has provided a rich musical furrow to plough throughout their 20 years of recording. Other song titles capture some of the spirit of the album, such as ‘You Mustn’t Show Weakness’, ‘You Hurt Me I Hate You’ or personal favourites, the stunning ‘A World of Love and Care’ and closing track ‘I Need The Angel’.
The songs from Goodbye Small Head were apparently born from a moment of what appears to have been some sort of psychic breakdown (Doctors could not diagnose a sickness) but after a week of hospitalisation, songs started pouring out of her, “all of them seemingly steeped in the helpless transcendence of being suddenly overcome, undone”. If that suggests an album filled with pain and anguish, well that’s not the album that emerged, as it is full of stories and energy and passion and reflection, smothered in her band’s typically thrilling guitar-led rock music, interspersed with some lush orchestration. “I would call this an orchestral emo prog-rock record sprinkled with samples,” she has said, and whilst that might not be entirely right, her sentence that “there’s something about dissolution that is both horrible and absolutely gorgeous” sort of sums up her ability to use challenging personal experience to produce another great, possibly her best, collection of songs.
But she’s doing whatever she wants. So maybe Goodbye Small Head won’t feature much. Personally, I think that likely to be unlikely. But I don’t know.
Support at Brighton comes from Dana Margolin, in her first outing of new songs since the break up of her former band, the supremely popular Porridge Radio. Brighton Source was the first to interview Dana way back when Porridge Radio were a band of local Brighton renagades just starting out, so we will be super-excited to see what she’s been doing. Get in early.
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Ezra Furman plays Brighton Dome on 28th October, with support from Dana Margolin – tickets here
Words by Jon Southcoasting
