I started listening to Ezra Furman in 2015, after my first Glastonbury. Neil insisted we go see them that year - I think on the Park stage, the best stage ofc - and we did and it was sunny and shiny and they had a captivating voice and a terrifying fragility (actually u could swap any of those adjectives around and it’d still be accurate) and I loved them. I used to listen to their album on the tube when I first moved to London, when I had no mates yet and my first-time-office boss was bullying me and I had sadness so deep I didn’t even know it existed yet, lying low and still like that ominous glowing turquoise water at the bottom of caves. You know, that 2015 album with Haunted Head on that sounds soooo joyful and everything is in major and then the lyrics are all about wanting to die. I was 22 and somewhere in my turquoise waters I wanted to die too. That album kind of soothed that feeling a bit, enough to get me off the platform and into work anyway. Enough to get me through, ya know.
I remember lamenting “I don’t wanna be the bad guy” to myself as I listened on my pre-downloaded playlist, underground, wishing I could write it out over and over but not wanting any tube dwellers to see me and know I was in some kind of pain, or something. I’ve always had a thing with writing lyrics out (in private); when I was a teenager I used to write pages and pages of A4 curly words from the lyrics of Los Campesinos!’s We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed and paste them on my walls or keep them in notebooks, and I used to copy down scripts and band names from the internet. Imagine what I was like when I discovered poetry, lol. Everyone says it, but you rly should see my Notes folder.
Then, a few years later, I saw Ezra Furman again at Shepherd’s Bush Empire with Jack. I was in the absolute throes of a descent into psychosis at that point (again, I didn’t even see it or know it myself yet. The waters remained still and in wait as I got jammed further and further into a cave too small to fit through) and was arguing with my ex-boyfriend over text, him saying he needed space because of some drama or other in his life, me not understanding how my inexorable need to be needed turned into pursuit instead of placidity in these instances, Ezra Furman playing devastatingly heartbreaking songs in the background (or foreground, rly). Just then, I’d typed poignant but deleted it and replaced it with heartbreaking. Their songs go way beyond poignant. They covered Tonight, Tonight by The Smashing Pumpkins, and I cried.
Imagine my surprise when I saw Ezra Furman this November at The Roundhouse in my little home of Camden, with my love Tobs, and all I felt was happiness. Actual straight up and down happiness, joy - unbridled, if you’d believe it. When they played Haunted Head, the only 2015 song they did play just over halfway through their set, I was crying again. I feel like I’ve grown up alongside Ezra, feel like she knows me because I know her. We’re a similar age, and they’ve soundtracked so much of my life. I’ve heard her, through her songs, grow into who she really is as I have grown into who I really am. Neither of us is sad in the same way we were anymore. Both of us worked (work) through it. We’re still here, we’re still dancing to Haunted Head. We’re still crying too, but it’s transformative now. We aren’t crying because we are lost. We’re crying because we found each other.
I’d resigned myself to the fact that nothing could top them covering Tonight, Tonight - it’s a perfect song as is and it was made even more perfect with Ezra’s gritty, melodic roar and the band’s cataclysmic guitars. I was more than happy with this, even with the memory of my phone shaking in my hand whilst I typed and they played. And then - and THEN - almost as if to concur with my feeling of growing through it together, weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement and turning into flowers when they feel the light on them, she started playing a cover. Guys - it was Because The Night. Patti Smith written by Bruce Springsteen. One of my favourite songs of all time. Actual, unbridled joy that sounds like pain but isn’t - not in the way you thought, anyway. Power through those chords. As Ezra said when talking to the crowd - “three chords: love and failure”. I think I’ve added the colon in that, but I think it feels right too. People look so beautiful when they’re enjoying themselves.
I’m old when I first heard the new album I felt like Furman contextualised our experience, me and my friends 30 years ago. It gave me such an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia for how we lived and loved then. Like someone was watching and they found the words to express the experience for us. I didn’t get to see this most recent tour hopefully next time.