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Jul 12, 2022 By Mark Redfern Photography by Tonje Thilesen

Ezra Furman is releasing a new album, All of Us Flames, on August 26 via ANTI-/Bella Union. Now she has shared its fourth single, “Lilac and Black,” via a lyric video. Listen below, followed by her upcoming tour dates.

A press release says “Lilac and Black” concerns “a revenge plot where she and her ‘queer girl gang’ drive out their oppressors and claim a hostile city for themselves.”

Furman elaborates further: “I’ve started to think of us trans women as a kind of secret gang, scattered across the world. Or that we could be that. So I wrote this theme song for us, and gave us some gang colors: lilac and black. Unfortunately, being trans usually comes with some kind of threat to one’s well-being or even one’s life. The hostility toward us right now is intense and the stakes are high. This song is an expression of deep solidarity and willingness to defend our lives. Being an inherently peaceful person, I hate to imagine it, but there are times that violent self-defense, or defense of others, is the moral and necessary path. This song is about being ready for that…. It’s also about how being trans so often feels like a war we never asked for. On top of the seemingly endless social stigma and barriers to our general thriving, various governments have now set in motion a concerted movement to virtually outlaw healthy trans existence. Let it be known: we demand safety, resources and dignity, and we are ready to fight for our lives and the lives of others.”

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. When All of Us Flames was announced in May, Furman shared its third single, “Forever in Sunset,” via a video. “Forever in Sunset” also made our Songs of the Week list.

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.”

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 explained in a previous press release. “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 said. So she went for drives around Massachusetts to find quiet places to write songs.

“This is a first person plural album,” Furman said. “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.

Ezra Furman Tour Dates:

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
Wed. Aug 24 - Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
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 *
Thurs. Nov 10 - Leipzig, DE @ Transcentiry Update Festival
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/ Jack White
! w/ Art Moore
*w/ The Golden Dregs

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