EZRA FURMAN

Gender-fluid, bi-sexual, an observing Jew, EZRA FURMAN would be a wholly new kind of rock star if he wasn’t the old kind too – ambitious, questing, and killer live. MOJO meets him in “humble” Chicago as a new album aims to add electronic fizz to his rich

The cross-dressing, Shabbat observing rock’n’roll revivalist who’s reaching for the stars: “Space Cadet, they called me.”

CHICAGO’S MAGNIFICENT RETRO landmark Richard’s Bar, on the nondescript outskirts of downtown, is a refuge from modernity, clouded by wreaths of ban-flouting cigarette smoke. In close proximity to photos of Frank Sinatra and a giant Goodfellas poster, which hint at Mob-protected status, Ezra Furman teeters on a barstool, and explains his choice of location. “Dive bars like this are where I became an adult, or where I first mastered playing music,” he affirms. “It’s my turf. Also, I’m not as broke as I was, but I used to resent people with money, and it’s comforting to be somewhere a bit shitty and cheap.” Though Furman now lives in Oakland – for “reasons of the heart” – Chicago is also his turf. He grew up in Evanston, a suburb an hour north of downtown, where, as a teenager, he’d take the train into the city, to seek out bands and records. “For me, Chicago’s the secret birthplace of rock’n’roll. It’s Chess Records, Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf,” he says. “And it’s the birthplace of improvised comedy. It’s a big city but it’s got a humble quality. It’s not LA or New York. People here aren’t trying to get famous. They just keep working, and I identify with that.”

FURMAN KNOWS ALL ABOUT hard work, as it took him eight years and six albums for his frayed, joyous brand of garage rock – think Jonathan Richman’s Modern Lovers with a ’50s rock’n’roll twist – to break out of Chicago. It hasn’t been an easy road. To reflect outwardly how he feels on the inside has taken even longer to achieve, though today’s chosen outfit – blousy shirt patterned with flowers, rouge lipstick and a string of pearls – suggests he’s finally comfortable in his own skin, even in a dive like Richard’s. Yet his startled blue-grey eyes, and constant fiddling with cigarettes and beer bottle labels, betray a character who still lives on his nerves. Which brings us to another reason we’re at Richard’s. “I’m not a heavy drinker, but I relate to addictive drinking, and addictive behaviour,” Furman admits. As a means to escape? “Yeah. From anxiety. I’m very into rituals: I depend on them to put myself in the correct frame of mind. That’s partly why I’m religious: it’s a road map to a mental space. Like a sense of moral responsibility and wonder. Rituals remind me of what I care about, or how real my life is.” Furman’s reality has notably shifted since his breakthrough album, 2013’s Day Of The Dog. Its follow-up, Perpetual Motion People – “That’s who it was made by, and for: people who feel they can never settle” – made the UK Top 25, he now sells out shows on both sides of the Atlantic, and is about to release his most adventurous album yet, Transangelic Exodus, tweaking his vintage brew with modernist flourishes. “Not a concept record, but almost a novel, a combination of fiction and half-true memoir, a queer outlaw saga,” he says. Music, however, nearly lost out to comedy. The second eldest of four siblings, Furman was a latecomer to music: “I wanted to be a writer, after watching shows like The Simpsons,” he says. But then, aged 10, he received a Walkman, and a Billboard Top Ten Hits Of 1961 cassette. “The music was so sweet, so spiritual,” he recalls. “Del Shannon’s Runaway –