33½ minutes with...Ezra Furman

Born in Chicago in 1986, Ezra Furman studied English at Tufts University in Somerville, MA. She also helmed Ezra Furman & The Harpoons, with whom she recorded four albums between 2006 and 2011.

- Interview: Lois Wilson

In 2012 she launched her solo career with The Year Of No Returning. She has since soundtracked the Netflix TV series Sex Education and in 2018 wrote a book on Lou Reed’s Transformer as part of the 33 1/3 series. This year’s Goodbye Small Head, her 10th solo record, is named after a Sleater-Kinney lyric from their 1999 single Get Up. She describes the album as “an orchestral emo prog-rock record sprinkled with samples.” She Zooms Record Collector from her home in Boston and is in thoughtful mood.

Tell me about the new album, Goodbye Small Head.

Every song is about becoming overwhelmed, the different sides of that, not always in a dark or sad way, sometimes in a beautiful way. I think the album opens with the most beautiful track [single Grand Mal] we ever made. It suggests the unsayable; the stuff that’s not easy to capture on a record. For me it’s a transcendent experience.

The album was conceived out of illness, wasn't it?

On 11 April 2023 I lost consciousness in the bathroom. I went to the hospital, and I could barely stay conscious. My partner was driving me, and I knew if I fainted again in the car, it would be so stressful, and they would have to figure out whether to pull over and revive me or keep going to the hospital. So, I was trying to stay conscious by remembering all the words to Bob Dylan’s Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues. I thought, “I am going to die today.” I have a strong sense that’s where these songs came from, from a moment of weakness and succumbing to weakness. I began haemorrhaging songs. They arrived unexpectedly and left my body violently.

How does it build on your last record, 2022's All Of Us Flames?