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Aug 30, 2019 Ezra Furman By Christopher Roberts

Ezra Furman has released a new album, Twelve Nudes, today via Bella Union. Now that the album is out, you can stream the whole thing below. Also below are Furman’s upcoming tour dates.

Also, earlier this week we posted our review of Twelve Nudes and you can read that here.

Previously Furman shared a video for Twelve Nudes’ first single (and opening track) “Calm Down aka I Should Not Be Alone” (it was one of our Songs of the Week). Beth Jeans Houghton (aka Du Blonde) directed the animated “Calm Down aka I Should Not Be Alone” video. Then he shared to more songs from it: “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend” (which was accompanied by an Alix Spence-directed video) and “Evening Prayer.” “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend” was also one of our Songs of the Week.

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.”

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.

Ezra Furman Tour Dates:

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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