All of Us in Flames
by Ezra Furman
(Bella Union, CD, LP, DL)
ezrafurman.com
★★★✩✩
Ezra Furman’s music has gone through some changes over the years. From the solid indie rock of the early noughties to the impassioned power-pop that gave the soundtrack of Netflix’s Sex Education its zip, it’s a mark of Furman’s inventiveness that All of Us In Flames can punch so effectively. Following in the wake of Transangelic Exodus (2018) and Twelve Nudes (2019), Flames is the last in a triumvirate of albums that trace a journey across, not only the US, but a very personal territory. In 2021, Furman came out as a transgender woman and the album is very much for her queer extended family.
How’s this expressed? The cover image of a famous Weegee (Arthur Fellig) photo of a police raid on a gay bar is one indicator; so, too, is the tender video (starring two transgender actors) that accompanies ‘Forever in Sunset’, which traces a storyline of outsidership healed by the kindness of strangers. Furman’s modus is an urgent rock – it’s mostly guitar-driven, though there are some nice soul choruses on ‘Point Me Toward the Real’, courtesy of vocalists Shannon Lay and Debbie Neigher. In essence, this is an album looking for, and exulting in, kindness and queer identity. One stand-out song, ‘Book of our Names’, is a reference to the Old Testament Book of Exodus, which latter also gives the album its title. Simply, it’s a way of saying all people matter and that we all have a right to a place of safety in this world.
Afar Ways
by Yanna Momina
(Glitterbeat CD, DL, streaming)
glitterbeat.com
★★★★✩
Recorded in a house on stilts, surrounded by water in a village on the Horn of Africa, Yanna Momina sings her songs of love and social observation. Accompanied, for the most part, by the most minimal of percussive instruments – the wooden bangles on her arms, a matchbox as a shaker – Momina’s voice is throaty and warm. In terms of direct music – locally made for an immediate audience – this is raw and real.
Momina, now in her 70s, is unusual for the Afar community from which she comes in that she composes her own material. Recorded and produced by Ian Brennan – whose past credits include Tinariwen and Ustad Saami – when he visited Djibouti, there is an enormous intimacy that shoots through Afar Ways. Momina has some provocative titles: ‘Everyone Knows I have Taken a Young Lover’ has a slow pace, a rhythm on a low, plucked string, while the small group of listeners hum sounds of assent; ‘My Family Won’t Let Me Marry the Man I Love (I Am Forced to Marry my Uncle)’ is her voice alone and, although lyrics aren’t provided (in any language) on the release, there is an emotional catch in the voice that’s hard to deny.
The Western world intrudes somewhat with the addition of acoustic guitar on ‘Honey Bee’ and the Andre Fanazara-penned ‘Heya’. This provides a familiarity that is not unwelcome but seems, especially on the latter song, to move the music away from Momina and into a male dominion where the sometimes sly, sometimes exuberant modalities of the titular artist get lost.
