Stream: Ezra Furman, ‘The Prisoner’

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ezra-furman
Ezra Furman

Love is strange, and that’s possibly what “The Prisoner” is all about. In this snappy vaudeville-like song, Ezra Furman sings from the heart of a little girl held captive in the basement, who is quite content with her master and her window with no view. And why not? He comes and visits the dark place where she dwells, feed her. It’s enough to be a good little girl. The song kicks off brightly enough, but as more instruments appear, a scatter of sonic treasures reveal themselves, a screaming electric guitar, toe-tapping piano and jubilant horn sounds. For those who enjoy things that veer towards the weird, Furman is our lipstick- and pearl-wearing man, here to save us from mundanity.

A B-side to single “Restless Year,” “The Prisoner” does not appear on Furman’s latest album, “Perpetual Motion People,” a collection of songs that is anything but predictable and not only embraces but celebrates despair and darkness like it’s all candy and sunshine. Though it fits right in with the record like a cherry on top. There is a point to his madness, by the way, he’s just not quite sure what it is or how to say it: “I meet a lot of fans in need, and in pain. I feel desperate a lot too — desperate to shake people by the shoulders and try to explain something, I’m just not sure what,” Furman says. “I’ve always viewed the idea of truth itself as something wobbly, always slipping out of our grasp. That’s what the songs are about: a head that is haunted, a society I cannot join, a lover who is perpetually in the act of leaving.” Maybe he will find some answers while writing about Lou Reed’s 1972 album “Transformer” for the 33 1/3 series of little books about seminal records.

||| Stream: “The Prisoner”

||| Live: Ezra Furman performs Wednesday night at The Echo.