Ezra Furman shares new single + video "Power Of The Moon" from upcoming album "Goodbye Small Head" out 16th May via Bella Union || UK live dates next month!
Ezra Furman returns with her new album Goodbye Small Head due out 16th May via Bella Union. Following the singles “Grand Mal” and “Jump Out”, today shares Furman shares new single “Power Of The Moon”, an existentialist wrestling match with whoever’s in charge of the universe. Powered by psychedelic 60s guitar licks, bouncing percussion and Ezra’s signature lyrical poetry, “Power Of The Moon” is the latest cut from her upcoming tenth album and comes accompanied by a video shot and edited by Sam Durkes. Click HERE to watch.
Commenting on the “Power Of The Moon” Ezra Furman says: “I took over five years writing this song. I’m not saying that makes it good, but it does mean that it means a lot to me. It’s another in my series of songs that make sweeping declarations about ‘the human mind’ (cf. “Ordinary Life,” “Poor Girl A Long Way From Heaven”).
The lyric is me taking on a problem I’ve had all my life: I believe in God and I can’t explain why to anyone; I don’t even understand it myself. I have no evidence, no argument and no doubt. I think it might just be the kind of brain that I have, one with a need to ‘take the frame from the painting / and let the colours bleed out into the room.’ I love a diffuse God, one who is everywhere, underlying everything, and who absolutely does not fit into my little consciousness with all its rational rules. My God makes no sense. That’s one thing I love about her. That’s how I know she’s much bigger than anything we could have invented.
When things stop making sense, that’s when the world of night has its hooks in you. That’s when the moon takes over. You wake up one day and you realize you can never really understand anything, and then you’re into the poetic, under the power of the moon.
This spirituality of mine has, annoyingly, not alleviated the existentialist nausea I’ve always felt. I’m overwhelmed by this God-haunted world. The train is on its way to flatten you. The blues come around to devastate you. But I find myself enjoying this nauseous life anyway. Especially when we get a good drum machine going and Jorgen plays a hypnotic bass line and then Sam and Ben come in with their perfect parts and existence feels like a real cool time.
Amazingly, somewhere within me I believed that this could add up to a hit song. God, what’s my problem?”
“Hi my name is Ezra Furman this is the press release for my new record.
Goodbye Small Head is the name of this record. Twelve songs, twelve variations on the experience of completely losing control, whether by weakness, illness, mysticism, BDSM, drugs, heartbreak or just living in a sick society with one’s eyes open. These songs are vivid with overwhelm. They’re not about someone going off the rails, they are inside that person’s heart. The songwriting here is a revision to William Wordsworth’s famous proclamation that “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.” I can agree with that, except for the tranquillity part. This poetry, my poetry, arrived in the midst of the storm. It was written as I teetered toward the edge. (I did the edits once I was safe again.)
The band and I had had a run of records that were very communal, very first person plural. We, us, ours. I was trying to exist in and create a shared space with my audience, make anthems for taking care of one another in dark times. But there does come a time when a woman is left alone in a room to unravel. And you need music for those times too.
GSH also reflects a band reaching a new peak of our powers. If I were a music journalist, I would call this an orchestral emo prog-rock record sprinkled with samples. Thank goodness I’m not a music journalist! I think of this music as cinematic and intense. A friend of mine said it sounded like “the coolest movie soundtrack of 1997,” and I’m quite pleased with that description. We’ve incorporated a small string section into eight of the twelve tracks, and are using samples for the first time—nothing you’d recognize, just some uncredited singing that Sam found online, chopped into beautifully evocative bits. Other than that, this record features something that’s become nearly an anachronism: a band that’s been playing real instruments together for over a decade, intuitively in touch with each other as musicians. Four players in a room together who know exactly how to respond to one another.
We recorded in Chicago with Brian Deck producing; a return to both my city of origin and my producer of origin, since Deck produced my first rock’n’roll records many years ago (Banging Down the Doors (2007) and Inside the Human Body (2008) by Ezra Furman & the Harpoons). In some way I think I was trying to return to a much younger mindset, when all the intensity and fear and emotion of life was less mediated by adult coping mechanisms. When it was all brand new with no filter.
Though I wrote parts of it earlier, I think the making of this album really began on the morning of April 11th 2023, when I woke suddenly ill, limped into the bathroom and lost consciousness. At the hospital they gave me all the tests and told me that actually, I wasn’t sick, and I could go home now. (Thanks, fellas!) I stayed in bed for months, exhausted and in pain, no doctor offering any convincing explanation or cure.
After a while I began haemorrhaging songs. Many of these songs arrived unexpectedly and left my body violently. All of them seemed to be steeped in the helpless transcendence of being suddenly overcome, undone. Lush album opener “Grand Mal,” named after the outdated term for a major seizure, and its following companion “Sudden Storm” were written in one hypomanic sitting after talking to an epileptic friend about the mystical quality of certain epileptic seizures. “Jump Out” is a panicked rocker for realizing you are going to have to leap from a moving vehicle because the driver has no intention of letting you out. “Power of the Moon” is an existentialist wrestling match with whoever’s in charge of the universe, and “Submission” is the combination of dread and relief felt when you realize the long-suffering “good guys” have no chance against 21st-century forces of evil. And that’s just Side A.
Is it dark? Yeah! Is it also wonder-struck, laced with psychedelic beauty, triumphant in its wounded way? Yeah again. And by the end of it, the whole thing flames out in a burst of good old-fashioned rock and roll, a desperate cover of underappreciated genius Alex Walton’s bottomlessly yearning “I Need the Angel.”
The title, “Goodbye Small Head” is a lyric from the 1999 Sleater-Kinney single “Get Up,” a phrase breathlessly, almost ecstatically intoned by Corin Tucker as she contemplates death and the dissolution of the self. There’s something about that dissolution that is both horrible and absolutely gorgeous. We fear losing ourselves and we want it more than anything. That’s where this record lives. That’s what this kind of music offers us: a look over the edge into the frightening and beautiful realm that lies beyond ordinary life. Have a look with me, won’t you?”
About Ezra Furman:
Ezra Furman is a boundary-breaking artist whose fearless creativity and emotional honesty have made her one of the most compelling voices in modern music. Blending punk energy, heartfelt lyricism and genre-defying innovation, Furman’s work is both deeply personal and universally resonant. The albums she’s released over the past decade demonstrate both her extraordinary talent and artistic evolution. Perpetual Motion People (2015) is a vibrant, genre-hopping explosion of wit and melody, while Transangelic Exodus (2018) pushed boundaries with its dystopian storytelling and atmospheric soundscapes, exploring themes of love, defiance, and identity. Twelve Nudes (2019) delivered raw, punk-fueled catharsis, channeling anger and resilience into fiery anthems. Her last album, All of Us Flames (2022), is a cinematic and deeply moving exploration of queer liberation, weaving intimate storytelling with grand, sweeping arrangements. She also found time to record the soundtrack for the Netflix smash hit TV series Sex Education. Ezra Furman’s music is a testament to the power of individuality and authenticity, marking her as a truly unique voice in modern music.
UK live dates:
(UK) - 18th May - Ezra Furman presents A World of Love and Care with Du Blonde, Modern Woman, Westside Cowboy, Special Guest TBA, EartH, London
(UK) - 19th May - Chalk, Brighton (Resident Outstore)
(UK) - 20th May - Rough Trade, Bristol
(UK) - 21st May - Rough Trade, Liverpool
(UK) - 22nd May - Rough Trade, Nottingham
(UK) - 23rd May - Bearded Theory, Catton Park, Derbyshire
US live dates:
(US) 24th April - The Town and The City Festival - Taffeta Music Hall - Lowell, MA
(US) - 8th July - Thalia Hall, Chicago, IL
(US) - 9th July - Amsterdam, St. Paul, MN
(US) - 10th July - Lefty’s Live Music, Des Moines, IA
(US) - 13th July - Turntable, Indianapolis, IN
(US) - 14th July - Ace of Cups, Columbus, OH
(US) - 15th July - Mr. Smalls Theatre, Pittsburgh, PA
(US) - 16th July - Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland, OH
(US) - 17th July - The Loving Touch, Ferndale, MI
(US) - 3rd August - Music Box 1337 India St, San Diego, CA
(US) - 5th August - Teragram Ballroom, Los Angeles, CA
(US) - 6th August - Moe’s Alley, Santa Cruz, CA
(US) - 7th August - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA
(US) - 10th August - Wonder Ballroom, Portland, OR
(US) - 12th August - Hollywood Theatre, Vancouver, BC V6K 2H2
(US) - 13th August - The Crocodile, Seattle, WA
(US) - 20th October - Fairmount Theatre, Montreal, QC
(US) - 21st October - The Axis Club, Toronto, ON
(US) - 22nd October - No Fun, Troy, NY
(US) - 23rd October - State Theatre, Portland
(US) - 26th October - Space Ballroom, Hamden, CT
(US) - 27th October - Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA
(US) - 28th October - Union Stage, Washington, DC
(US) - 29th October - Webster Hall, New York, NY
Goodbye Small Head artwork and tracklist:
1. Grand Mal
2. Sudden Storm
3. Jump Out
4. Power Of The Moon
5. You Mustn’t Show Weakness
6. Submission
7. Veil Song
8. Slow Burn
9. You Hurt Me I Hate You
10. Strange Girl
11. A World of Love and Care
12. I Need The Angel
