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May 10, 2022 By Mark Redfern Photography by Tonje Thilesen

Ezra Furman has announced a new album, All of Us Flames, and shared a new song from it, “Forever in Sunset,” via a video. All of Us Flames is due out August 26 via ANTI-/Bella Union. It includes the recent singles “Point Me Toward the Real” and “Book of Our Names.” Check out the Noel Paul-directed “Forever in Sunset” video below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art, as well as Furman’s upcoming tour dates.

Furman had this to say about “Forever in Sunset” in a press release: “The biggest influence on the lyrics of this song is a conversation I had with a friend of mine. When COVID was first hitting, she was talking to me a lot about how ready she felt. She was like, ‘People who have been comfortable in life are freaking out right now. But queer people like me have been in crisis before. I grew up poor and my family kicked me out when I was a teenager. My world has already ended plenty of times before, and we queers know what to do: we take care of each other, we help each other out, we have a network of support for the crises we know will hit us from time to time.’

“And then she lost her job and ended up moving in with me and my family for like three months. And she was right, we were okay and we were taking care of each other.

“That influenced a lot of what the whole record is about. But ‘Forever in Sunset’ is specifically a woman who’s been through some shit speaking to a new lover who is becoming attached to them, trying to warn the lover about how she is trouble, about how she has been through crises and they will come again. And that’s just how she lives, never settled, never safe, but also never defeated/finished—‘forever in sunset.’

“Sometimes it feels like crisis is hitting more and more of the general population. They think the world is ending. But people who have been through a personal apocalypse or two have something to teach them. The world doesn’t end, shit just happens and if we don’t die we have to take care of each other.”

John Congleton (Angel Olsen, Future Islands, Sharon Van Etten) produced All of Us Flames. Furman’s last full-on album was 2019’s Twelve Nudes. In 2021, Furman surprise released a new EP that featured songs she had written for season 3 of the Netflix show Sex Education. It was fittingly titled Sex Education - Songs from Season 3 and featured three new songs, alongside two songs previously released with her former band Ezra Furman & The Harpoons in 2011. Furman has done the music for all three seasons. In 2020, Furman shared the official soundtrack for seasons 1 and 2 of Sex Education, along with a video for the song “Every Feeling.”

Furman shared All of Us Flames’s “Point Me Toward the Real” in early March, which was her first single for ANTI-. “Point Me Toward the Real” was about someone getting out of a psychiatric hospital and made it to #1 on our Songs of the Week list. Then “Book of Our Names” followed in April.

All of Us Flames is described as the third part of a trilogy, including 2019’s Twelve Nudes and 2018’s Transangelic Exodus.

“I started to think of trans women as a secret society across the world: scattered everywhere, but so obviously bound together, both in being vulnerable and having a shared vision to change a fundamental building block of patriarchal society,” Furman explains. “I’ve been building my world of queer pals, and it feels like we’re forming a gang.”

Much of the new album was written in the early months of the pandemic. “I had no time alone anymore; my house was super crowded,” Furman says. So she went for drives around Massachusetts to find quiet places to write songs.

“This is a first person plural album,” Furman says. “It’s a queer album for the stage of life when you start to understand that you are not a lone wolf, but depend on finding your family, your people, how you work as part of a larger whole. I wanted to make songs for use by threatened communities, and particularly the ones I belong to: trans people and Jews.”

Check out our 2020 interview with Furman in episode two of our official podcast’s first season.

Read our 2018 interview with Furman.

All of Us Flames Tracklist:

1. Train Comes Through
2. Throne
3. Dressed in Black
4. Forever in Sunset
5. Book Of Our Names
6. Point Me Toward the Real
7. Lilac and Black
8. Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club
9. Poor Girl A Long Way From Heaven
10. Temple Of Broken Dreams
11. I Saw the Truth Undressing
12. Come Close

Ezra Furman Tour Dates:

Thu. May 19 - Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom *
Sat. May 21 - San Francisco, CA @ August Hall *
Mon. May 23 - Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile *
Tue. May 24 - Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theatre *
Wed. May 25 - Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom *
Thu. May 26 - Boise, ID @ Visual Arts Collective *
Sat. May 28 - Denver, CO @ Gothic Theatre *
Mon. May 30 - Des Moines, IA @ Gas Lamp *
Tue. May 31 - Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line *
Wed. Jun. 1 - Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall *
Thu. Jun. 9 - Somerville, MA @ Crystal Ballroom (Ezra Solo)
Thu. Jul. 21 - Valencia, ES @ Diversity Festival
Sun. Jul. 24 - Hertfordshire, UK @ Standon Calling Festival
Sun. Aug. 14 - Des Moines, IA @ Val Air Ballroom ^
Tues. Aug. 16 - Milwaukee, WI @ UWM Panther Arena ^
Wed. Aug. 17 - Indianapolis, IN @ TCU Amphitheater at White River State Park ^
Thu. Aug. 18 - Crickhowell, UK @ Green Man Festival
Tues. Aug 23 - Edinburgh, UK @ Edinburgh International Festival
Mon. Sep. 12 - Montreal, QC @ La Sala Rosa !
Tue. Sep. 13 - Toronto, ON @ Rec Room !
Wed. Sep. 14 - Detroit, MI @ The Loving Touch !
Thu. Sep. 15 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr Small’s !
Fri. Sep. 16 - Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar !
Sun. Sep. 18 - Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts !
Mon. Sep. 19 - Providence, RI @ Fete Ballroom !
Tue. Sep. 20 - Boston, MA @ The Sinclair !
Wed. Sep. 21 - New York, NY @ Webster Hall !
Thu. Sep. 22 - Dover, DE @ Firefly Festival
Mon. Oct. 31 - Bruges, BE @ Cactus Club
Tue. Nov. 1 - Paris, FR @ Le Trabendo
Wed. Nov. 2 - Utrecht, NL @ Tivoli Vredenburg
Thu. Nov. 3 - Hamburg, DE @ Uebel & Gefährlich
Sat. Nov. 5 - Cologne, DE @ Kulturkirche
Sun. Nov. 6 - Berlin, DE @ Festsaaal Kreutzberg
Mon. Nov. 7 - Prague, CZ @ Roxy
Tue. Nov. 8 - Vienna, AT @ Arena Wien
Wed. Nov. 9 - Graz, AT @ Dom Im Berg
Sat. Nov. 12 - Fribourg, CH @ Fri-Son
Sun. Nov. 13 - Munich, DE @ Freiheitshalle
Mon. Nov. 14 - Frankfurt, DE @ Zoom
Wed. Nov. 16 - Brighton, UK @ St Georges Church
Thu. Nov. 17 - London, UK @ The Roundhouse
Sat. Nov. 19 - Birmingham, UK @ The Mill
Mon. Nov. 21 - Manchester, UK @ O2 Ritz

* w/ Grace Cummings
^ w/ Jack White
! w/ Art Moore

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