Ezra Furman - All Of Us Flames

On her sixth album as a solo artist, Ezra Furman is gunning for a delicate sense of majesty. It’s a difficult thing to achieve - while it can be beautiful when an artist can create big sounds almost without effort, or with a sense of humility, the music can become uninteresting if they lean too far into their delicate side. Yet when they do achieve what they’re out to get, it’s wonderful. The stabbing piano and silken brass of ‘Throne’ create a thrilling sound that has a real sense of spiky theatricality, while ‘Forever In Sunset’ takes a gentler but no less engaging approach, burning slowly before exploding into a life-affirming finale. Elsewhere, however, the results are a little more mixed. The dissonant ambience of ‘Ally Sheedy In The Breakfast Club’ comes across as more strange than atmospheric, and so many effects have been layered onto it that it sounds cold. The final quarter of the album feels weighed down by its dragging pace, with ‘I Saw The Truth Undressing’ being a particular lowlight, given that it doesn’t feel eventful enough to be able to hold its own. It’s not a bad record, but it’s not quite there.