“I offer it to you with a heart full of wonder and pain” (Ezra Furman via Instagram)
Goodbye Small Head is best introduced by Ms. Ezra Furman herself. “Music like this takes me out of language, out of my small head and out of my mind, to the place where meaning isn’t tied to words but leaps beyond their little kennel and into the great unknown and unsayable.” (Ezra Furman via Instagram). “I wanted somewhere to put my amazement and trembling. My yearning, aching, and total bewilderment. The experience of complete loss of control in the face of overwhelming beauty and hurt. And so Goodbye Small Head” (Ezra Furman via Instagram). Furman’s seventh studio album is a beautiful, deeply vulnerable, twelve-song attempt at just that: capturing the uncapturable, defining the undefinable, and describing varied feelings and thoughts surrounding moments of joy, pain, chaos, vulnerability, and everything in between.
Written in dedication to the epileptic community and through conversation with an epileptic friend, lead single and opener “Grand Mal” chases the otherworldly feeling of experiencing a seizure. With its floating melody and hazy backing vocals, soaring, dreamy strings (a new and welcome instrumental addition that weaves its way throughout the album), and poetic lyrics that are simultaneously direct/grounded and fantastical (I believe in the shiver that comes in and takes over/ I don’t wait ’til it’s over/I bathe in its waves/To the sea from the river I’m swept and pulled under/ I will never recover/ I won’t be the same/It can happen whenever/I don’t hold the lever/The shiver that severs the heart from the brain/And it burns through the tethers on electrical pathways/It hangs me up halfways between heaven and plain), the song seeks to capture the ephemeral feeling of hanging on a ledge, without any type of control, between consciousness and sleep. Soon follows “Jump Out,” which navigates a similar lack of control, but now concerning the all too familiar feeling of being trapped in a car headed off-route (Hey driver/ Where you taking us?/ Stop the car now/Stop the car right now) with nothing but dread and confusion about what lies ahead (Cell phone’s dead/ Neighborhood is dark/ What’s the plan now?/How’s it all going down?) and a burning desire to escape (And there’s no way out, of course, abort, abort/ I’m going to jump out/I’m gonna jump out/I’m gonna hit the ground running). A good old fashioned rock hit, “Jump Out” races and rages, conveying confusion, chaos, desperation, and resolve, as Furman urgently questions her circumstances in the brief moments of calm that are verses and snarls her way up to a crescendoing chorus heavy with guitar, drums, and her wails for freedom and release.
“Submission” marks a shift into a section of slower songs. Set over the sound of a heartbeat that eventually goes out as the song comes to a close and a sleazy, sultry instrumental fitting for thoughts and actions best left for dark, unfrequented corners, Furman plays with the irony of finding peace and freedom in submission, paralleling BDSM (I’m under its power still/I wince through electrolysis/The lights are in my face/ I cry and arch my back, I scream and throw a fit/ But in the end, I’m sunk/ I’m certain to submit/Like a bitch, and Let’s see how much I can take/Keep going a little more, I can take a little more/I’ll take it/Take it, take it) with laying down the banner for an anarchial cause (This insurgent life is verging on the sadomasochistic/ And the mystic in me mistook it for freedom, Like an old fashioned punk/We’re fucked/It’s a relief to say/We’ll see no victory day, and The souls of the defeated/Slip out through the bars that cage us), an act that is as audacious (as daring to acknowledge the taboo often is and comparing two unlikely, but truly similar taboos is even more) as it is well done. “A World of Love and Care, ” a fitting near-end to this album, is an anthem for the bleak times we live in, where basic human rights for trans folks are constantly being called into question and systematically stripped. Between the dramatic, dark strings that pronounce and weave their way throughout the song and Furman’s unapologetic, bold questionings (Do you ever imagine a world of love and care?/What would you be doing right now if you lived there and Who gets left out of your dream of a good society?) and indictments (You got caught in a bad dream where strength is cruelty/You got caught in a bad dream of a fucked up way to be), “A World of Love and Care” demands acknowledgement of those forced to the margins and being failed by a society that claims compassion, goodness, and righteousness. Choosing to end with hope, Furman charts a course for a brighter future as she calls upon us all to “Dream better/ [and] Dream bigger” with her.
The aforementioned are just four of the songs that comprise the engaging, emotional trip through the tapestry of Furman’s wonderings, emotions, and experiences, inspired by a world she is deeply moved by in all ways, good, bad, and most conflicting, that is Goodbye Small Head. “[The rest of the album] waits, perched, blushing, posing, wanting you to listen.”(Ezra Furman via Instagram) And listen, you should.
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