Ezra Furman announces new album & tour, shares “Grand Mal” video

Ezra Furman has announced their 10th album, Goodbye Small Head, which will be out May 16 via Bella Union. The title is lifted from Sleater-Kinney’s “Get Up” and Furman says it “reflects a band reaching a new peak of our powers” and “if I were a music journalist, I would call this an orchestral emo prog-rock record sprinkled with samples,” adding, “Thank goodness I’m not a music journalist!” You can read Ezra’s self-penned press release for the album below.

The first single from the album is “Grand Mal,” which opens the album. Ezra notes it was “named after the outdated term for a major seizure,” and it and its “following companion ‘Sudden Storm’ were written in one hypomanic sitting after talking to an epileptic friend about the mystical quality of certain epileptic seizures.” You can watch the video, directed by Eleanor Petry, below.

Ezra and his band will be on tour this summer and fall, wrapping things up in NYC on October 29 at Webster Hall. Tickets for all stops on the tour go on sale Friday, February 14 at 10 AM local time. All dates are listed below.

“Hi my name is Ezra Furman this is the press release for my new record.

Goodbye Small Head is the name of this record. Twelve songs, twelve variations on the experience of completely losing control, whether by weakness, illness, mysticism, BDSM, drugs, heartbreak or just living in a sick society with one’s eyes open. These songs are vivid with overwhelm. They’re not about someone going off the rails, they are inside that person’s heart. The songwriting here is a revision to William Wordsworth’s famous proclamation that “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” I can agree with that, except for the tranquility part. This poetry, my poetry, arrived in the midst of the storm. It was written as I teetered toward the edge. (I did the edits once I was safe again.)

The band and I had a run of records that were very communal, very first person plural. We, us, ours. I was trying to exist in and create a shared space with my audience, make anthems for taking care of one another in dark times. But there does come a time when a woman is left alone in a room to unravel. And you need music for those times too.

GSH also reflects a band reaching a new peak of our powers. If I were a music journalist, I would call this an orchestral emo prog-rock record sprinkled with samples. Thank goodness I’m not a music journalist! I think of this music as cinematic and intense. A friend of mine said it sounded like “the coolest movie soundtrack of 1997,” and I’m quite pleased with that description. We’ve incorporated a small string section into eight of the twelve tracks, and are using samples for the first time—nothing you’d recognize, just some uncredited singing that Sam found online, chopped into beautifully evocative bits. Other than that, this record features something that’s become nearly an anachronism: a band that’s been playing real instruments together for over a decade, intuitively in touch with each other as musicians. Four players in a room together who know exactly how to respond to one another.

We recorded in Chicago with Brian Deck producing; a return to both my city of origin and my producer of origin, since Deck produced my first rock’n’roll records many years ago (Banging Down the Doors (2007) and Inside the Human Body (2008) by Ezra Furman & the Harpoons). In some way I think I was trying to return to a much younger mindset, when all the intensity and fear and emotion of life was less mediated by adult coping mechanisms. When it was all brand new with no filter.

Though I wrote parts of it earlier, I think the making of this album really began on the morning of April 11th 2023, when I woke suddenly ill, limped into the bathroom and lost consciousness. At the hospital they gave me all the tests and told me that actually, I wasn’t sick, and I could go home now. (Thanks, fellas!) I stayed in bed for months, exhausted and in pain, no doctor offering any convincing explanation or cure.

After a while I began hemorrhaging songs. Many of these songs arrived unexpectedly and left my body violently. All of them seemed to be steeped in the helpless transcendence of being suddenly overcome, undone. Lush album opener “Grand Mal,” named after the outdated term for a major seizure, and its following companion “Sudden Storm” were written in one hypomanic sitting after talking to an epileptic friend about the mystical quality of certain epileptic seizures. “Jump Out” is a panicked rocker for realizing you are going to have to leap from a moving vehicle because the driver has no intention of letting you out. “Power of the Moon” is an existentialist wrestling match with whoever’s in charge of the universe, and “Submission” is the combination of dread and relief felt when you realize the long-suffering “good guys” have no chance against 21st-century forces of evil. And that’s just Side A.

Is it dark? Yeah! Is it also wonder-struck, laced with psychedelic beauty, triumphant in its wounded way? Yeah again. And by the end of it, the whole thing flames out in a burst of good old-fashioned rock and roll, a desperate cover of underappreciated genius Alex Walton’s bottomlessly yearning “I Need the Angel.”

The title, “Goodbye Small Head” is a lyric from the 1999 Sleater-Kinney single “Get Up,” a phrase breathlessly, almost ecstatically intoned by Corin Tucker as she contemplates death and the dissolution of the self. There’s something about that dissolution that is both horrible and absolutely gorgeous. We fear losing ourselves and we want it more than anything. That’s where this record lives. That’s what this kind of music offers us: a look over the edge into the frightening and beautiful realm that lies beyond ordinary life. Have a look with me, won’t you?”

Goodbye Small Head:
1. Grand Mal
2. Sudden Storm
3. Jump Out
4. Power of the Moon
5. You Mustn’t Show Weakness
6. Submission
7. Veil Song
8. Slow Burn
9. You Hurt Me I Hate You
10. Strange Girl
11. A World of Love and Care
12. I Need the Angel

Ezra Furman – 2025 North American Tour
4/24: Lowell, MA @ The Town and The City Festival (solo)
7/8: Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
7/9: St. Paul, MN @ Amsterdam
7/10: Des Moines, IA @ Lefty’s Live Music
7/13: Indianapolis, IN @ Turntable
7/14: Columbus, OH @ Ace of Cups
7/15: Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr. Smalls Theatre
7/16: Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom
7/17: Ferndale, MI @ The Loving Touch
8/3: San Diego, CA @ Music Box
8/5: Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom
8/6: Santa Cruz, CA @ Moe’s Alley
8/7: San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
8/10: Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
8/12: Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theatre
8/13: Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile
10/20: Montreal, QC @ Fairmount Theatre
10/21: Toronto, ON @ The Axis Club
10/22: Troy, NY @ No Fun
10/23: Portland, ME @ State Theatre
10/26: Hamden, CT @ Space Ballroom
10/27: Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
10/28: Washington, DC @ Union Stage
10/29: New York, NY @ Webster Hall