Ezra Furman writes simple songs “for the mind to stretch out in”

thefader.com:

It’s rare nowadays to find sincere protest music worth listening to. Even those elite artists who do make legitimately radical statements in their songs — Downtown Boys, Moor Mother, Special Interest, et al. — mix their full-throated activism with experiments in form.

But on her recent single “Book Of Our Names,” Ezra Furman takes a direct swing at capitalism in the style of the earnest folk rockers who shook the structures of power over half a century ago. “I want there to be / A book of our names / None of them missing / None quite the same,” she sings in the track’s bookending refrain. “None of us ashes / All of us flames / And I want us / To read it aloud.” Her words hit with a refreshing honesty, like opening a gift you’ve been expecting but are moved by nonetheless.

All of Us Flames, out today on ANTI- and Bella Union, will be the final installment in a trilogy of albums that also comprises 2018’s Transangelic Exodus and 2019’s Twelve Nudes.

Their serialization was retrospective, determined by Furman after Flames’ recording was finished, but it makes sense: Unlike her earlier, equally brilliant but less emphatic work, these three records play as direct challenges to a patriarchal system teetering on the precipice of extinction.