I was slightly concerned at the start of the year that 2018 may not prove to be a particularly good year music wise. However, promising buds are beginning to sprout and Ty Segall and now Ezra Furman to name just two, have released startling records that lay down early markers for others wishing to make statements in that respect this year.
Transangelic Exodus, Furman's fifth album, (out today), seems to be the moment he's been heading towards all his career. Always a confrontational, raging artist, and one of note, he's never before gathered all of his themes and obsessions as impressively as he does here.
The record is a true concept. Thirteen songs which return again and again to the same issues. Smalltown America and its trappings, the all consuming desire to flee once and for all, but a nagging terror that it will hunt you down on the road you speed down and claim you once again. The look of Furman on the sleeve staring with barely disguised dread into his rear-view mirror says it all.
It all adds up to a very powerful album. Furman is Bruce Springsteen in a dress. Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Glam and Punk, and Furman's own startling, original presence meld to forge a series of blazing, burning statements. Not all of it floats my boat musically personally just yet but I doff my cap to its ambition and scope and will return to it. It's a series of brief witty vignettes, short stories that come together to create a Great American Novel of alternative experience, perhaps one of the greatest since Transformer. It's that good!
Everything comes together towards the end with Love You So Bad, destined to be one of my songs of the year which relives the passions and agonies and dreadful, inconsolable loss of High School. There's plenty more here to relish and songs I'm sure to form similar bonds with over the coming months. I look forward greatly to that happening.
The concerns that Furman addresses here are as relevant now as they've ever been particular in a country where people have decided that they'd like to have Donald Trump as president. Dare to be different and applaud those who have the bravery to do so and flaunt it! Furman is close to the front of that pack.
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