66: Mac’s Milk
Also: Ezra Furman.
Ezra Furman
I’m becoming so lazy in my olding age: I’m quite in love with Ezra Furman, and she is coming to town next week, playing a very reasonable 7pm show at a small venue – and I’m still feeling like I might not make it out! I’m wiped out by the end of the work day lately, no lie. But I should go, I am imagining a personally important show.
Ezra Furman is not a musician from the 1980s (she was born in that decade) – but if we share any tastes, I think you’ll like this music. To be really honest though, I’m really just writing this all in order to psych myself into going.
I don’t know which specific path led me to Furman, but I stumbled on the masterpiece Twelve Nudes (2019) via Spotify’s keep playing whatever forever feature, and I now love Spotify a little (3%) more than I did before. It’s done me a big favour.
Twelve Nudes is an incredible record – guitar based and punk inflected, it spiritually samples much of the history of rock music in service to the best collection of songs I’ve heard in a while. It’s angry and funny, complicated and passionate. It is Mighty.
From ye olde Wikipedia entry:
The album takes its name from a series of meditations by Anne Carson "on the intense pain we deal with in life".[1] Furman was inspired to create Twelve Nudes by her anger at the perceived injustices of the Trump administration and late capitalism, as well as her Jewish and transgender identities.
Learning that Ezra was a trans person* helped me, I think, understand her incredible voice, which sounds like so many familiar and varied voices at different moments, can do so many different things, can travel through octaves and styles so powerfully. I’m nuts about her voice.
Twelve Nudes starts with the anthemically powerful but also hilarious Calm Down aka I Should Not Be Alone. Her voice is distorted and blasting, the guitars are slamming and pounding, until they cut out for a bar to reveal a winking and perfect “whoo, whoo” from Sympathy for the Devil.
That blast of feelings is followed by another anthem: Evening Prayer aka Justice, a blasting and distorted campfire song I’d love to hear at a future Occupy.
I wasted my twenties in submission
I thought I was outside the system
I was rolling over for wealth and power
As if they really cared about meThe kids are just getting started
They've only just learned how to howl
And most of them throw in the towel
'Bout the time that they turn twenty threeIf you've got the taste for transcendence
Then translate your love into action
And participate in the fight now
For a creed you can truly believeIt is time for the evening prayer
Time to do justice for the poor
Furman’s lyrics are masterful and varied: sometimes they’re rapid and percussive and at other times they’re delivered slowly, the music wrung out of them over time. They’re always thoughtful and crafted and kind of perfect – it all sounds like these songs have been worked and worked out live. But who knows. Maybe she’s just a master.
Her screams and growls are fierce but always tuneful, and she uses it to hit big ideas out of the park/into your spine. Trauma flexes back and forth from Judas Priest growling to her quieter, clearer style, sometimes mixing them and sounding (to me) like Alice Cooper.
The mind snaps and economies collapse
when the one who works hardest gets the smallest reward
The big scam is nobody gives a damnthat the penthouse suite depends on the bottom three floors
Transition From Nowhere to Nowhere shows off the multiple voices, and I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend shows off a few more – you’ll have to listen to get what I’m trying to share. Ezra Furman is a world-class singer. Just fucking incredible.**
Blown is as distorted as possible – hard, but short and effective. She follows it up with what should be a hit single: My Teeth Hurt, a tight pop anthem about exactly the title.
America follows, another should-be-hit that contains this wonderful lyric:
When you go to the movies
Don’t believe what you see in the movies
The whole world is in 3D – it’s incredible
And the record finishes with a song as powerful and blasting as the rest, with the weary but determined chorus
My heart is on fire, does anyone know?
What can I do but rock, rock and roll?
What can I do but rock and roll?
*I’m sure I’m saying it wrong: I know she is a woman, and I don’t know when you start saying that and not mentioning the previous situation of maleness. For the record, I could care less. I am not hung up on gender, always felt very much in-between the two poles myself, and support any changes that offer options for human flourishing. And I trust the youths. But I came up well before this was a societal discussion and am not “online” enough to gleen the shifting details of preferred terms. Forgive me and my perspective, and if I’ve offended you, try and thicken your sweet skin a bit while I grow and learn. We are on the same team.
**I’m still shocked at Microsoft’s suggestions that I might be offending people with the word “fucking”. I can’t believe it hasn’t figured out who I am yet.
And then, NEXT,
If you do go to listen on Spotify, you’ll get another incredible gift: the songs that play afterward will likely be from Furman’s soundtrack for the wonderful show Sex Education (Netflix). And that equally amazing record will reveal 10 other incredible things about Ezra Furman’s abilities.
That’ll set you up to go find out the whole story – and you might be thrilled to find that she has at least 9 albums, and they all seem to be exploring and interesting and talented.
I am still at the start of this discovery, and I am very, very happy to know this music. I should go see the show. Marjan says I should just push myself - just drink Monsters and go.
Ezra Furman plays next Tuesday in Toronto, at the Rec Room, and details about the rest of her tour can be found here.
I hope you’re doing alright. Thanks a lot for reading.
Love always,
Santa