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May 21, 2019 By Christopher Roberts Beth Jeans Houghton

Ezra Furman has announced a new album, Twelve Nudes, and shared a video for its first single (and opening track) “Calm Down aka I Should Not Be Alone.” He’s also announced some tour dates. Twelve Nudes is due out August 30 via Bella Union. Beth Jeans Houghton (aka Du Blonde) directed the animated “Calm Down aka I Should Not Be Alone” video. Watch it below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art, as well as the tour dates.

Twelve Nudes is the follow-up to 2018’s Transangelic Exodus. Last year he also did the soundtrack for the Netflix show Sex Education. Twelve Nudes was recorded “quickly” in Oakland last fall and mixed by John Congleton (Sharon Van Etten, St. Vincent). A press release calls it a “‘spiritually queer’ punk record” and says it has two spiritual heroes, the late musician Jay Reatard and Canadian writer/philosopher Anne Carson. The latter inspired the album’s title, as she “used the term ‘nudes’ to describe the meditations she used to deal with intense pain in her life.”

The album tackles Furman’s Jewish identity and the Israel/Palestine conflict, wealthy men accused of sexual assault, and an America that “is balanced on a knife-edge between white male supremacy and the dream of universal opportunity.”

“One of my goals in making music is to make the world seem bigger, and life seem larger,” Furman explains in the press release. “I want to be a force that tries to revive the human spirit rather than crush it, to open possibilities rather than close them down. Sometimes a passionate negativity is the best way to do that.”

Of “Calm Down aka I Should Not Be Alone” Furman says: “Desperate times make for desperate songs. I wrote this in the summer of 2018, a terrible time. It’s the sound of me struggling to admit that I’m not okay with the current state of human civilization, in which bad men crush us into submission. Once you admit how bad it feels to live in a broken society, you can start to resist it, and imagine a better one.”

Furman sums up Twelve Nudes this way: “This is our punk record. We made it in Oakland, quickly. We drank and smoked. Then we made the loud parts louder. I hurt my voice screaming. This was back in 2018, when things were bad in the world. The songs are naked with nothing to hide.”

Read our interview with Ezra Furman on Transangelic Exodus.

Read our review of Transangelic Exodus.

Twelve Nudes Tracklist:

1. Calm Down aka I Should Not Be Alone
2. Evening Prayer aka Justice
3. Transition From Nowhere to Nowhere
4. Rated R Crusaders
5. Trauma
6. Thermometer
7. I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend
8. Blown
9. My Teeth Hurt
10. In America
11. What Can You Do But Rock n Roll

Ezra Furman Tour Dates:

Tue. May 28 - Hay on Wye, UK @ Hay Festival
Wed. May 29 - Norwich, UK @ Waterfront
Thu. May 30 - Sheffield, UK @ Foundry
Sun. June 2 - London, UK @ All Points East Festival
Sun. July 21 - Benicassim, ES @ Benicassim Festival
Tue. July 23 - Cork, IE @ Cyprus Avenue
Wed. July 24 - Dublin, IE @ Button Factory
Thu. July 25 - Galway, IE @ Galway Festival
Sun. July 28 - Topcliffe, UK @ Deer Shed Festival
Thu. Sept. 5 - St. Paul, MN @ Turf Club
Sat. Sept. 7 - Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
Sun. Sept. 8 - Detroit, MI @ El Club
Mon. Sept. 9 - Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
Tue. Sept. 10 - Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz P.D.B.
Wed. Sept. 11 - Cambridge, MA @ Sonia
Thu. Sept. 12 - Brooklyn, NY @ Warsaw
Sun. Sept. 15 - Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts
Mon. Sept. 16 - Washington, DC @ Union Stage

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