Ezra Furman didn’t really want Transangelic Exodus to be called a concept album, but then again, Ezra Furman never really wanted to do the obvious thing. “It’s about being a queer outlaw,” they said, describing the record that would become their most theatrical and paranoid road trip yet. “I’m in love with an angel… and the government is after us, because angels are illegal.” Sure, you could roll your eyes at the dystopian fanfic pitch, but Furman wasn’t playing it for camp. This was a car chase with queer bodies in the trunk, chased by cops and legislation.
“This is supposed to resonate with the feeling of paranoia,” Furman explained. “Anyone who felt vulnerable before our president came to power feels way more vulnerable.” Trump had only been in office a few months at the time, but Furman was already tallying the damage: hate speech rising, white supremacy emboldened, queer folks further pushed into the margins. And rather than making a placard-and-bullhorn protest record, they went for something closer to a feverish novel. “It’s not my act of activism,” Furman shrugged. “It’s more like—this is what’s raging in my heart, so that’s what I write about.”
Furman has always had the novelist itch. “I used to want to be a prose writer,” they admitted. “This is an attempt kind of at writing a postmodern novel, but in songs. If that makes it sound pretentious, well, maybe it’s pretentious. I’m a proud pretentious.” That’s the charm—while other bands were busy cranking out nostalgia, Furman was gleefully cutting and pasting like a literary grad student gone feral. “I love chopped-up stuff, weird, surprising sounds—like, what is that crazy thing that just came in?”
Which is why Transangelic Exodus marked a split from the scrappy rock ’n’ soul homage of Furman’s earlier days. He and his band had hit their ceiling playing garage-soul tributes; now they wanted to compete with the modern vanguard. “Yeezus was really inspiring to me,” Furman said, with a nod to Kanye’s brutalist beats. “And Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City. We could be doing that—we could have our own special take on it.” The single “Driving Down to L.A.” was the proof of concept: a jagged gearshift of a song that practically sneered at its own chorus before flooring it.
Even the name change mattered. “It just felt like we had become a different project with a different goal,” Furman explained, though they conceded the obvious. “Yeah, it’s egocentric to keep my name out front. But that’s me, baby.”
Still, Furman’s secret weapon wasn’t the dystopia or the chopped-up noise—it was melody. “I’m gratified to hear you say that,” they replied when told their songs still had hooks sharp enough to draw blood. “Because there have been people who said, ‘You’re just yelling.’ And yeah, sometimes I’m just yelling. But I love melody. Paul McCartney, Paul Simon—the masters. Paul Simon even said melodies are over, nobody can write them anymore. And I was like, screw you, Paul Simon. I can write a melody.”
They weren’t wrong. The single “I Love You So Bad” was sticky in a way that no angel-wing metaphor could ever explain. It clung like a pop song should, even as it tried to peel itself apart. “I love worms,” Furman cracked when called out for writing earworms. “Since I was a child, I’ve always loved worms.” That line—half joke, half confession—probably explained Furman better than any press release: an artist digging through the dirt, making tunnels where there weren’t any before, then daring you to follow.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the video below!
