Interview: Ezra Furman

By Andrew Hertzberg

 

Ezra Furman is one of the unfortunately often forgot indie musicians of our day. Maybe because he started making waves around the same time as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and it was easy to compare his unconventional vocals to CYHSY's Alec Ounsworth's. But unlike them, Furman has continued to mature with each recording, growing equal parts more refined and primal. He and fellow Harpoons released Mysterious Power earlier this year, which nabbed a number two spot from the Sun-Times for the best of 2011. Now, Furman has a solo album: The Year of No Returning is ready for release on February 7th, 2012. The Evanston native now calls San Francisco home, but let's not hold it against him. The opportunity to go solo shows how consistent he is making stellar recordings, his gut-spilling yelp still in tact. Take a listen to the album's first track "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" here, and catch him live with the Harpoons at the Hideout this Thursday, December 29 and solo at SPACE on Friday, December 30. Read more to see what Ezra had to say about going solo, moving west and starting fights. 

WCR: The new album that you have coming out was recorded in the attic of your apartment at Montrose and Damen. Why did you choose that environment as opposed to a studio or somewhere more conventional to record in?

Ezra: Well, it is a studio. I was living in this house full of musicians and weirdos and outlaws and stuff. And the top floor was a recording studio. It was just there, it was there and I was living there for months, went on tour and came back and it was still there and it was just calling my name, you know? I probably wouldn’t have even made the album if the studio wasn’t there. Well, maybe I would have. The house really birthed the album in a way, living in this house. I started writing most of the songs while living there. I moved into this house that musicians lived in, had a studio on the top floor, a live venue on the basement floor and I just started feeling differently about what to do with music. And it culminated into going up the attic and making an album. 

Since Mysterious Powers was released only less than a year ago, how would you say the new album differs from that?

All the albums I’ve put out so far, I consider them rock and roll affairs...part of the goal was to capture the joy of playing in a rock and roll band where everyone’s playing together, having a good time. The new one is made in a lot more contemplative way. It’s built every track from the ground up, kind of. I was doing it alone without any outside help, except Tim [Sandusky] who was recording with me, the producer and engineer; there was not much input from anyone else. Rather than the rock and roll collaborative version of a musician, I was like the creative guy just kind of tinkering.

Is this your first foray into an entirely solo thing?

Yeah. Well, since the band has existed. I used to make some recordings before I was in the band. It’s so great to be in a band. It’s so fun for us, for me, to play live shows, and we want to make our records like our shows in a lot of ways. And that was always distracting us from getting down to the…I mean, you can hear it on some of the tracks we’ve made that we also have this drive to make…well, not softer music, but something that’s sort of less off the cuff and more composed and more contemplative. I don’t want to give the impression that the new album is all soft and stuff. It’s just made differently, where you can hear every instrument when it comes in.

Record review: Ezra Furman & the Harpoons - 'Mysterious Power'

Posted by Sasha Geffen

There's a ferocity that tears through the length of Mysterious Power, crackling in the soundwaves no matter on what tone or tempo the album rests. Ezra Furman takes the helm of the Harpoons quartet with a brazen command of pathos, belting unapologetically about heartbreak, loneliness and suicide. Whether he's blasting a frenetic monotone bark or settling into sweetly familiar melodies, Furman channels a savage energy into his ragged tenor. He nails a delivery that draws upon the theatricality of such frontmen as Pete Shelley and Dan Bejar, remaining unflappably likable throughout.

Fans of Bright Eyes will enjoy the way Furman spikes bluegrass with his own mania on the charmingly pastoral "Don't Turn Your Back on Love" and "Wild Rosemarie." Those nostalgic for '80s punk will be pleased with "Too Strung Out," a dead ringer for the Buzzcocks or Dead Kennedys. The rest of the record tends to fall between those extremes, muscling past the vintage into a fresh and furious sound. Furman drives home "I Killed Myself But I Didn't Die," a wry and unforgiving suicide attempt recap, with the same survivor's rage once heard on Bright Eyes's epic "Let's Not Shit Ourselves." One might hear traces of Crooked Fingers in the saloon piano on the title track, while "Hard Time in a Terrible Land," a wild rockabilly stomp, echoes the vintage swagger of Nick Cave at his most raucous.