Rock’s queer wildcard Ezra Furman tells us about his insane experiences in London, and the politics behind his new record
One of the few saving graces of the reigning political shitstorm is that protest music is no longer solely the domain of a man with an acoustic guitar and a hat. From Kendrick Lamar to Fever Ray, socially-conscious and angry records are being made from every corner of the musical spectrum.
Ezra Furman’s latest is one such release. Transangelic Exodus tells the story of a new phenomenon where some people suddenly start growing angel wings. The repressive authorities view this as a potential contagious threat and start severely clamping down on those who have been affected. One queer couple are targeted and have no choice but to go on the run from the law. The resulting 13 songs are simultaneously sprawling, urgent and dense, just like the Great American Novels that influenced it, and immediately draw comparisons with the authoritarian atmosphere that has infected the world over recently.
Later this month, the Chicagoan and dress-wearing, self-described ‘tomgirl’ will be bringing his band to London for his biggest show to date at Brixton Academy. When we called him up to talk about it, he was taking a short break from cleaning and readying his house for Passover (a process he calls “very intense and beautiful”) and he told us about the political motivations behind the record and his disastrous early experiences of London.
Hey Ezra, so you’ve recently finished your US tour. How did that go?
It was very extreme. That’s what touring’s like for me. Some of the greatest moments of my life but also the most tired as well. It’s really hard work to be a great performer.
A lot of Transangelic Exodus is about being on the run. Did you notice any parallels with being on tour?
Yeah sure. I actually think the same reason the album’s about being on the run is the same reason that I’m someone that tours a lot and has often been unstable about where I live. It’s some kind of interest in staying in motion and being this travelling searcher. Something just compels me to go, it can be a sense of hope as often as it can be a sense of fear. I’m orientated that way as a mover.
You’ve said before you dislike the album being called a ‘concept album’. Why is that?
It’s just a little bit fixed in people’s minds what it means. With this album, I was actually trying to expand for myself what the genre of ‘album’ is and can be. There were ways in which I wanted it to be more like movies and books I love. When you hear ‘concept album’, people are like “well, OK, I know what that is” and put it into a section in their brain. I think it dims part of what this album is trying to do, which is be an unusual form. Then again, I won’t really deny it, it is what it is.
Has anybody called it a protest album?
I think so, I’ve probably called it that. It’s fairly accurate, but there’s other stuff to it as well!
You’ve been encouraging your concert-goers to register to vote recently, which ties in with that feeling of protest on the record. Do you a feel a duty to use your position to try and change things?
A little bit. As an artist, you can’t deny what you’re obsessed with. That’s what makes a good artist, someone who follows their deepest obsessions. I just heard that less than half of American millennials voted, which is dismal and very sad. If you participate in that, you don’t get to contribute to the largest things that happen in society. It’s crazy to me that you would choose to opt out of that opportunity. You don’t get to complain about anything if you didn’t vote. It makes me feel like you don’t care about your power or want to use it to see life improve. Probably most people who didn’t vote just didn’t think about it, so I’m trying to talk about it a lot, so that people know that they’re wasting a big part of their life if they don’t vote.
Are you fearful that any progress we’ve made with queer or minority rights could be reversed with the current political situation?
Yeah, but it’s not really the way I’d put it. In a way, a lot of progress has been made, but at the same time, not enough. We’re in crisis: trans people are being murdered. To turn away from acting on that is unforgivable. I wouldn’t call it progress being undone, I would say it’s a crisis not being addressed or that’s being exacerbated. I’ve been sceptical about words like progress and progressive. I think of the line from my song “we’re making progress, but progress towards what?” I’ve noticed that people are acting as if we had eliminated all of the problems and now someone is turning them all back. I don’t like that. Sure, there’s a constitutional right for gay marriage, which is really good, but people are being fired because they’re trans and becoming homeless.
While the world becomes so dystopian, how do you stay positive?
Well, I learned that if I get really down and pessimistic, which is easy to do, the less I feel I can do anything and participate in some of the things that need to happen. There is a saying from the Talmud, which is a holy book for the Jews, which says “it’s not your job to finish the work, but you’re not allowed to not do any of the work”. I’m probably translating it poorly, but you’ve got to find whatever gives you energy to be one of the people who does something positive in the world, that revives the human spirit. We played a show in November 2016, the night after the Presidential election, and we called our band ‘an anti-despair machine’. Despair is cancerous to helpful action. Well, that’s what it feels like for me at least. I’ve had periods since where I’ve been like ‘it’s fucked, there’s no amount of helpful things I can do that can stop this horrible tide of social decay’. But then I became part of the social decay by saying that. I hope my music gives people a little energy or anger or happiness to keep on living. I hope anyway, it’s a very small contribution to be in a band.
But it does feel as if you’re at least contributing to the narrative and helping in certain ways.
I don’t feel that artists have a responsibility to address social crises, I really don’t. The job of an artist is to do whatever they’re interested in. It just happens that my head has been full of people in trouble and the stigamised. It wasn’t an activist mission. Although I do like that all the interviews I’m doing now are talking about political stuff, as opposed to asking about me personally and trying to turn it into a story about how I came from an oppressive background and found freedom, which is not exactly the story of my life. People would put it that way and it would piss me off.
Do you feel more comfortable talking about political developments and the state of the world, rather than your personal life?
Yeah, I’ve talked about myself a lot on my last album, Perpetual Motion People, which was so about me and who I am. I’ve already introduced myself and now I can do some powerful, no-rules writing!
You’re coming back to London next month to play your biggest show here. What have your past experiences of London been like?
The first time I came to London, I got deported and sent back to Amsterdam. I didn’t know the rules and nobody told me anything about work permits or anything. They asked me at the border what I was here to do and I was like ‘I’m a musician here to do some shows, do you wanna come?’. They sent me away in an armoured car and drove me back right up to the point on the runway where I’d got off the plane, with my passport in an envelope that read ‘On Her Majesty’s Service’.
Have subsequent visits been a bit more fruitful?
Well, we started from the bottom in London. Even when we did eventually get in a year later, we played our first show to about 9 people in Brixton. Now, we’re playing a 5,000 capacity venue in the same place!
How do you keep the same sense of intimacy in the larger venues?
I’m sure some intimacy is lost, but I always think of my job as being the same job, no matter the stage, which is to just make the spirit of art happen in front of people. I think we do it quite well! I always try and imagine what it would be like to go to this concert, perhaps only having heard a couple of the songs before.
Would you like to play stadiums one day?
My instinct is I would not, but maybe there would be… I haven’t thought about it that much! I kind of don’t expect to get that popular, but if I did, I would think about ways to make it work. I’ve only been to one stadium concert before, to see Bob Dylan, which wasn’t a good show, but Elvis Costello opened for him with just one guitar, which blew me away, so maybe there is a way. Who knows?
Ezra Furman plays the O2 Brixton Academy on Wednesday 23rd May. Transangelic Exodus is out now.
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