“I wanted nothing more than to open up and bleed” sings Ezra Furman on Calm Down AKA I Should Not Be Alone, the track that opens his fifth solo album. Well, mission accomplished: he’s spraying the claret around liberally here, dropping the strong narrative drive of his last collection, Transangelic Exodus (a “queer outlaw saga” about a man who falls in love with an angel and has to flee from the oppressive government), in favour of red-raw punk frankness. Twelve Nudes veers madly through distorted, ragged-throated, urgent punk rock, like Jonathan Richman being slowly dissolved in acid, with sludge-metal flourishes on Trauma and a Dead Kennedys-ish stomp on Rated R Crusaders.
Just as engaging is Furman’s bracing self-analysis: on Evening Prayer AKA Justice he berates himself for his complacent 20s: “I was rolling over for wealth and power/As if they really cared about me”. On the sweet change of pace of I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend, a sousedly sentimental ballad, meanwhile, he muses: “My responsible friends are applying for jobs/But me I was considering ditching Ezra and going by Esme”. At 11 songs (yes, the title is a trick) and just over 25 minutes, it all makes for a short, sharp, exhilarating blast, closing with the question we’re all asking as things fall apart: What Can You Do But Rock’n’Roll?
