EZRA FURMAN - My Small Head (Berry Coloured Vinyl)

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 tranquility." I can agree with that, except for the tranquility 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 anthems 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.

Vinyl release of Ezra Furman - My Small Head (Berry Coloured Vinyl). Released through BELLA UNION and available on LP.