Ezra Furman has announced her 10th studio album ‘Goodbye Small Head’ with new single ‘Grand Mal’, as well as sharing details of a UK and North American tour. Find all the details below.
The Chicago-born singer-songwriter is due to release the 12-track record on May 16 via Bella Union, following on from 2022’s ‘All Of Us Flames’. You can pre-order/pre-save it here.
Furman has previewed the forthcoming LP with its cinematic or orchestral lead single, ‘Grand Mal’. The song is accompanied by an Eleanor Petry-directed music video, which will premiere at 5pm GMT today (February 13).
To announce ‘Goodbye Small Head’, Furman has penned a lengthy bio about the new project – where she described it as “an orchestral emo prog-rock record sprinkled with samples”.
The album was recorded in her native Chicago and helmed by the artist’s “producer of origin” Brian Deck.
“Goodbye Small Head is the name of this record. 12 songs, 12 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,” she began.
“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 overow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity’. I can agree with that, except for the tranquillity part.”
Furman continued: “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.”
She went on to explain that the upcoming LP “reflects a band reaching a new peak of our powers”, adding: “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 recognise, 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.”
Furman wrote: “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.”
The artist is set to embark on a UK headline tour shortly after releasing ‘Goodbye Small Head’, kicking off with a show at EartH in Hackney, London.
She’ll then play a run of gigs in partnership with record stores Resident and Rough Trade, before making an appearance at Bearded Theory 2025.
Furman is also scheduled to head out on an extensive North American tour this year. Dates on these legs feature performances in New York, Los Angeles, San Franciso, Vancouver, Chicago, Portland and Toronto. See the post above.
You can find ticket details here (UK) and here (North America). Visit Ezra Furman’s official website for more information.
The tracklist for Ezra Furman’s ‘Goodbye Small Head’ is:
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’
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