Ezra Furman won many friends and admirers with his fine 2015 album Perpetual Motion People and his appearance at Glastonbury.
To keep the momentum going, and to draw a line under this phase of his musical career, Furman has gathered together half a dozen "orphaned songs", four of which were originally earmarked for Perpetual Motion People.
Furman's gift is to write tunes that sound casual and spontaneous but never sloppy. Like a reformed slacker he retains a punk attitude but the arrangements to his songs still manage to be quietly sophisticated.
On the three rock'n'roll numbers (Teddy I'm Ready, Halley's Comet and Little Piece Of Trash) the backing is like that of a bargain-basement version of The East Street Band.
Penetrate is a sparse hobo-esque acoustic number and Splash Of Light is a wounded, existential love song ("We have to pretend that it all makes sense").
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The most interesting track is The Refugee, his first song to directly address his Jewish background and dedicated to his grandfather who fled the Nazis. Accompanied by woozy fiddle and clarinet players, he narrates the struggles of a man on the run, sleeping rough and scavenging for food: "this is the sound of the Jew who refused to die".
The playing time is just twenty minutes but the EP is still substantial enough to fill the gap nicely until the next full length release materializes.
Ezra Furman's website
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