EZRA FURMAN is not one to stand still. He’s been rocking his way around the world for nearly 10 years and it seems as though his time has finally come.
Hailing from Chicago, he started off fronting Ezra Furman and the Harpoons, then recorded solo material before deciding on his current outfit, Ezra Furman and the Boy-Friends.
His upcoming album, Perpetual Motion People, seems to sum up his restless approach. The record kicks off with Restless Year and Ezra says: “The opening lines of my records tend to be summary statements. Every year has been restless, physically and even more internally.”
Hence the title, and he adds: “Perpetual Motion People – that’s who it was made by and that’s who it’s for. People who feel they can never settle. I’m restless in most aspects. I don’t tend to live in one place for long.”
Ezra is now based in San Francisco, but it’s not just his geography that changes – some of his current press photos show him in female attire and he explains: “I am always changing the way I present my gender.
“Also, my religious life is intensely up and down in terms of observance and personal convictions. I’ve always viewed the idea of truth itself as something wobbly, always slipping out of our grasp.
“That’s what the songs are about: a head that is haunted, a society I cannot join, a lover who is perpetually in the act of leaving.”
A central idea is the fugitive or runaway in a hideout built in the midst of an unfriendly or alienated world.
“The other aspect is a feeling of expansiveness, the largeness of emotion, from joy to pain. Some people think life is small or confined, but to me it’s just big, and I’d say each song has something to say, to declare themselves large.”
He may not fit in musically anywhere else, but Ezra’s happy with that, saying: “There’s rarely been a scene that I’ve wanted to be part of. I’m just not hearing other stuff out there that I wish existed, so that’s my goal, to do it myself.”
So, he’s decided life in perpetual motion is: “A good way to be; if you are never on a sure footing you don’t get bored and the world is always new. It causes a lot of pain as well, but it seems worth it, and it is probably the only way I know how to be.”