Concerts

Get educated by Ezra Furman in Harvard Square

The Tufts graduate, Hebrew College enrollee, author, and "Sex Education" soundtrack composer will showcase her new album at The Sinclair on Sept. 20.

Photo by Tonje Thilesen

2 minutes to read

What singer-songwriter Ezra Furman has undergone on seemingly every personal, professional, and existential level over the past four years sounds downright exhausting.

In February 2018, the Chicago native released “Transangelic Exodus,” her seventh LP in a recording career that began in 2007 with The Harpoons when she was a student at Tufts.

Two months later, she published her first book, a 33-1/3 entry devoted to Lou Reed’s “Transformer,” in which she wrote, “I propose that for folks like me and Lou, the real meaning of queerness is defined by continual transformation, being permanently on the run from the straight authorities (real, imagined or both) that would try to force us to be something untrue. And then eventually, maybe, you grow older and stop worrying so much about it. I don’t know yet; I’m only thirty. The same age, by the way, that Lou Reed was when he recorded ‘Transformer.’” (Unsurprisingly, the influence of Reed and kindred spirits David Bowie and Iggy Pop are apparent in Furman’s output.)

The following January saw the premier of the engrossing Netflix series “Sex Education,” the soundtrack to which – in its first three seasons – would include more than a dozen songs that Furman wrote specifically for the show and almost as many that had appeared on her previous releases.

In August 2019, Furman served up “Twelve Nudes,” a taut, 11-song collection with a 27-1/2-minute running time. “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend” included the somewhat foreshadowing lyric, “I was considering ditching Ezra and going by Esme.”

Last spring came Furman’s announcement that she – while still going by Ezra – was a trans woman and had been a mother for more than two years. That fall, she – having moved from Brooklyn (back) to Somerville – enrolled at Newton’s Hebrew College.

Still, her soundtrack work, motherhood, and rabbinical studies (which my sources suggest are currently on pause) didn’t prevent her from dropping “All of Us Flames” this month.

“This is a first person plural album,” Furman says of the 12-track offering. “It’s a queer album for the stage of life when you start to understand that you are not a lone wolf, but depend on finding your family, your people, how you work as part of a larger whole. I wanted to make songs for use by threatened communities, and particularly the ones I belong to: trans people and Jews.”

One more thing: Ezra’s brother, Jonah, is well known locally for fronting Krill, the Boston band whose debut album, “Alam No Hris,” was recently reissued in commemoration of its 10th anniversary.