Consumer Guide Album

Ezra Furman: All of Us Flames [Anti-, 2022]
My favorite thing here is the rousing pre-revolutionary opener "Train Comes Through," my second favorite "Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club," about Furman's teen crush on the gal she wanted not to fuck but to be. But on almost every track trademark high-tenor urgency delivers songs that tend somewhat less compelling than on 2018's picaresque Transangelic Exodus or 2019's punky Twelve Nudes. Be sure not to miss "Point Me Toward the Real," the fervent hope of someone who just got picked up at the "County Cook Psychiatry Institute" in a convertible driven by a benefactor whose relationship to the singer remains tantalizingly undefined--especially since Furman is a known rabbi-in-waiting. B+