Ezra Furman - Twelve Nudes (LP) - Yellow Vinyl

Ezra Furman’s Twelve Nudes arrived on August 30, 2019, the kind of late-summer blast that feels like it’s been bottled under pressure and finally uncorked. It’s lean, loud, and wired with purpose. Across about half an hour, Furman and band punch through songs that carry the heat of punk while keeping his knack for hooks and sharp storytelling right at the surface. If Transangelic Exodus was a fever dream road movie, this one sounds like the moment the car door flies open and you take off running.

The mood is confrontational but not joyless. Furman’s anger is focused, often political, and never vague. You can hear the grind of late-capitalist burnout and bodily autonomy worries, but also the stubborn insistence on life and love that’s been in his music since the early days. “Calm Down aka I Should Not Be Alone” announces that balance right away: fuzzed-out guitars, a beating-heart tempo, and a vocal that wavers between a rallying cry and a plea. “Evening Prayer aka Justice” hits like a street-corner sermon over a rattling rhythm, while “My Teeth Hurt” turns chronic discomfort into a sing-along. The writing is plainspoken and punchy, and it lands because Furman doesn’t hide behind metaphor when the moment calls for blunt truth.

“I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend” cuts in from another angle. It’s tender, almost hushed, and it makes the whole record feel deeper. Furman has spoken often about gender, faith, and survival, and the song threads those themes into a ballad that could have lived in any era of indie rock, if indie rock had always been this open-hearted. On Twelve Nudes it stands as a quiet pillar, the kind of track that keeps you flipping the record back over after the noise has faded.

The production is intentionally raw. Guitars snarl, drums thump like they were tracked in a room where the walls are sweating, and the vocals sit high enough in the mix to feel like a conversation at shouting distance. It’s the right frame. These songs don’t need polish. They need to hit, pass through, and leave a mark. Play the Twelve Nudes vinyl and you get that punch with a touch more air around the edges, which suits the set’s start-stop dynamics and the sputtering, overloaded tones. The sequence moves fast, but it’s not sloppy; there’s a clear sense of pacing, a tension between sprints and breathers that keeps side A and side B in balance.

Critics clocked the charge right away. Outlets like The Guardian, Pitchfork, and NME latched onto the urgency and the songwriting precision under the racket. Fans took to it because it feels lived-in and true, a dispatch from someone trying to make sense of a body and a world that keep shifting the rules. It also arrived during a streak of high visibility for Furman, who around that time was broadening his audience with his work on the Sex Education soundtrack. But this album doesn’t ride any coattails. It stands on its own as a distinct burst in a discography that resists staying put.

If you’re hunting for Ezra Furman vinyl, this is a keeper. The jacket art looks sharp in hand, and the running time makes it a satisfying single-LP spin without dead weight. If you already love Perpetual Motion People or Transangelic Exodus, Twelve Nudes shows another gear, a harder and hotter one that still carries Furman’s melodic instincts. If you’re new and wondering where to start, this is a strong entry point because it puts everything on the line fast. It’s also the kind of record that makes you want to buy Ezra Furman records online at 2 a.m., then go searching the next day at your local Melbourne record store just to talk about it with a human being. That’s part of the fun with Ezra Furman albums on vinyl: they draw conversation, they invite stories.

Twelve Nudes is protest music that refuses to become a lecture. It’s restless, catchy, agitated, and often beautiful. Put the needle down, let the first track jolt your nervous system, and see if you don’t start feeling your blood move a little faster. That’s the promise this album keeps, on digital, on CD, and especially on Twelve Nudes vinyl. If your shelves have room for a blast of righteous noise that still makes space for tenderness, you won’t regret giving it a home. And if you’re browsing from afar, there’s no shame in going the easy route to buy Ezra Furman records online. Just make sure you play it loud.