Ezra Furman sings with defiance on Goodbye Small Head

Ezra Furman’s latest album, Goodbye Small Head, is intrinsically brave. It’s full of the optimistic guiding light that is hope, especially as it’s plagued by dark subject matter. In a press statement, Furman candidly explained that these twelve songs delineate a loss of control through means conventional and not: weakness, heartbreak, mysticism, drugs, and living in society with your eyes wide open.

On the latter, this arduous second Trump term has already caused unfortunate global uncertainty to set in for transgender people, of which Furman has blossomed as such in recent years. By the circumstances of when these recordings emerged, Furman’s ruminations here are so important. They’re not all exclusively about distantly combating societal injustices, like much of her laurelled music – there’s a dichotomy permeating the new album, in that it’s “triumphant in its wounded way” as Furman describes. Throughout Goodbye Small Head are string samples tugging at the heart, further compounded by Furman’s soaring voice at her fiercest. In Furman’s catalogue, this is a novel and necessary display of fervence in this hypervigilant era.

Furman’s unwavering vocal ability dissolves any vulnerability when up against the world’s exclusionary powers – her voice rises loftily in the hopes that listeners will do the same. “Jump Out” opens with buoyant stringing and low-humming synths until Furman panickingly wails, begging a driver who has no intention of letting her out to stop the car. Angst envelops the brooding, skittery breakbeats on “You Mustn’t Show Weakness”, where she implores herself with that titular mantra, to avoid folding to peril as many entrust her to deliver important social messages. A semblance of autonomy may be distant, but her cutting voice brings her closer.

There are other moments of deft musical pieces. One of Furman’s most unfolding openers, the lush, swaying “Grand Mal” features sweeping strings and chopped-up voice samples, which is particularly lullabying despite its subject matter on a major seizure. Meanwhile, the album ends with an electric cover of Alex Walton’s “I Need the Angel”, bowing out intensely with heartland rock riffage, her voice breathy by the end of the LP from how much passion she puts into her catharsis.

The most affecting advocacy is the inquisitive “A World of Love and Care”, where Furman lays down notions that “Human dignity was supposed to be a guarantee for all” and “Love and dignity was supposed to be a priority for us” – that “us” may as well be those just like her, being forced out and alienated despite progress on visibility.

Furman’s upfront picture of Goodbye Small Head is perhaps clouded by jest: “orchestral emo prog-rock record sprinkled with samples,” she writes. Yet, it’s a continued display of her marked empathy as a songwriter, trying to seize control against a rhetoric centred on exclusion. Her observational musings are even more: a sign to band together now more than ever.