Restitution is due Sleater-Kinney, as Ezra Furman steals a line from the indie-rock powerhouse’s deliriously catchy death song “Get Up” – a vivid guide to shuffling off this mortal coil, if there ever was one – for the title of Goodbye Small Head, her devastatingly emotional and dramatic 10th album. Furman appears determined to pay the debt in full, with a genre-hopping free-for-all obsessed with feeling powerless – existentially or otherwise – and alone but strangely at peace with letting go.
She’s experienced turbulence, bearing the weight of the world on her shoulders since coming out as a transgendered woman and the onset of other cataclysms. Maybe that’s why she went looking for salvation from Alex Walton’s “I Need the Angel,” Furman and her rambling band’s darkly feverish and gnarly version pleading for divine intervention from a pulpit of Patti Smith’s poetic evangelism. It’s not the only instance of wild, nervy rock ‘n roll on Goodbye Small Head, as terror grips the tense interplay of cutting strings and strummed electric guitar in “Jump Out,” which imagines escaping a car during an attempted kidnapping.
Cathartic even in its quietest moments, Goodbye Small Head paints on a broad canvas, employing for the first time ever various samples, as the gently surging chamber pop of “Grand Mal” opens a world of possibilities. Its companion piece, “Sudden Storm,” hypnotically marches into a warm bath of psychedelic indie-rock, run for her by The Flaming Lips, both songs exploring with eyes wide open the mystery of epileptic seizures.
Pneumatic beats, hoary, distorted vocals and guitar snarl give a somewhat sparse and bluesy “Power of the Moon” a witchy swagger, as Furman comes on strong like PJ Harvey and would like to speak with the manager of this thing called life. The polyrhythmic bluster and wailing of “You Mustn’t Show Weakness” unleashes a flood of feelings, while a nihilistic and murky “Submission” can’t help but glide along sleek, synth-pop currents, the lightly rustic “Veil Song” reaches back to Furman’s indie-folk roots and the orchestral expanse of “Slow Burn” is full of yearning and kissed with sensual, passionate noir.
An even more grandiose and ambitious “A World of Love and Care” finds Furman in an idealistic state of mind, as she expresses resiliency, rebellion and raw vulnerability in equal measure throughout Goodbye Small Head. She is taking Sleater-Kinney’s call for living and dying without fear or compromise to heart, going full-on cinematic with a surreal and haunting “Strange Girl,” channeling the weird, evocative storytelling of David Lynch and Nick Cave. Heads are going to roll.
