Friday Mixtape: Ezra Furman's mix of driving love songs

This week’s Friday Mixtape is by the brilliant Ezra Furman who releases his second solo record, Transangelic Exodus today! Although this is his second record on his own, Ezra’s fans will be familiar with his prolific output, from his earlier work in Ezra Furman and the Harpoons and later Ezra Furman and the Boy-friends. Transangelic Exodus sits beside these releases but is also a personal landmark for the singer-songwriter, acting “almost as a novel, or a cluster of stories on a theme, a combination of fiction and a half-true memoir,” he says.

Describing his new record as “a personal companion for a paranoid road trip. A queer outlaw saga,” Ezra’s It’s Nice That mixtape reflects this, encouraging listeners to listen to it while driving over to a loved ones house. Over to Ezra to tell us more about the narrative of Transangelic Exodus, his teenage obsession with The Strokes and his selection of tracks…

Why have you picked these songs?

These are desperate songs. Songs that plead for love or salvation. Songs of people at the end of their rope. They allow expression of the desperate need which we all feel.

When or where should this mixtape be listened to?

Driving in the rain to the house of someone you love, parked outside the house of someone you love, driving home from the house of someone you love without having gone into the house.

What song or album did you listen to as teenager and why? What kind of posters did you have on your bedroom walls?

On my walls were the Strokes, The Who, John Lennon, Robert Johnson and Louis Armstrong. I loved the Strokes so bad. When the first song from their second album came out, 12:51, I listened to it about a hundred times a day. You could only hear it on their website. It was so perfect. I had just turned seventeen.

Can you tell us a little about your latest record?

It is an album that could be made into a road movie. Not that it should be but it could. It is set mostly in a car. Me and my illegal angel are driving the car, trying to escape from the government who are after us. We sleep in parking lots and at the houses of the few people we can trust. My angel’s wings are shedding feathers. He recently escaped from the hospital. It is an album about being queer. I like it a lot.

If a feature film about Ezra Furman was to be made, what song would be on the trailer?

Like A Ship (Without A Sail) by Pastor T. L. Barrett