Ezra Furman - Music From Season 1 & 2 Of The Netflix Original Series, Sex Education (LP)

Ezra Furman’s Music From Season 1 & 2 Of The Netflix Original Series, Sex Education is that rare TV tie-in that plays like a real album, not a merch add-on. Released in August 2020 through Bella Union, it gathers the songs that turned up across the first two seasons and folds in new material Furman and her band cut specifically for the show. On vinyl it feels even more like a living document of the series’ heart, capturing that blend of adolescent urgency, queerness, and awkward romantic heroism that made Sex Education click long before the algorithms caught on.

Furman has always written like someone chasing a feeling that refuses to sit still. You hear it here in the raucous, sax-splashed rockers and the soft-focus ballads that creep in between the anthems. The old favorites that fans clocked during season one still prick the ears. “Love You So Bad” turns teenage misery into a doo-wop torch song that actually laughs through the tears, while “Restless Year” rides a jittery rhythm that suits hallway crushes and bike rides after curfew. These weren’t written for the series, but they make sense in that fictional Welsh town where kids dress like it’s 1986 and text like it’s 2020.

The newly recorded songs slot in with almost suspicious ease. “Every Feeling” is the keeper, a quick, nervy blast that sums up the chaos of being sixteen better than most John Hughes needle drops ever did. Furman and the Visions lean into bright guitar chug, handclap energy, and a vocal that wobbles between a shout and a plea. It’s easy to see why the music team kept coming back to her catalog. Few modern songwriters can swing from Velvet Underground grit to girl group sugar in one breath and make it sound like an argument with yourself, which is the exact temperature of Sex Education at its best.

Production is gritty but warm, very much in line with Furman’s Bella Union era. You can pick out the room on the drum kit and the tilt of the sax when it barges into a chorus. Even when a track edges toward punk tempo, the edges feel hand-cut rather than sanded down. That fits the show’s visual world, which has always looked like a kid’s carved-up notebook come to life. It also makes the LP a satisfying listen front to back, not just a highlights reel from your Netflix queue.

If you followed Furman through Perpetual Motion People and Transangelic Exodus, the connective tissue is obvious. She’s still wrestling with identity, faith, desire, and how to hold them all at once without dropping any. Only here the questions are framed by Otis and Eric and Maeve, which gives the music a different kind of buoyancy. There is nothing cynical in the way these songs were placed. They color scenes, they don’t underline them. That matters when you’re deciding whether to shelve this with your Ezra Furman albums on vinyl, or file it under soundtracks. The answer is both.

Critical reception at the time picked up on that dual function. Outlets noted how often Furman’s songs acted like a narrator for the show’s messiest choices, and fans treated the soundtrack like a gateway drug to her catalog. For newcomers, this LP is a generous introduction. For long-timers, it’s a time capsule that happens to contain a handful of tracks you’ll reach for regardless of where Otis is in his therapy journey.

Collectors will want to track down Music From Season 1 & 2 Of The Netflix Original Series, Sex Education vinyl while it’s still reasonably priced. It sits neatly beside other Ezra Furman vinyl, and it’s the kind of record you stumble upon while crate-digging and think, right, I forgot how much this music holds together outside the show. If you like to buy Ezra Furman records online, most indie shops still list copies, and you’ll often spot it tucked in the soundtrack bin at a Melbourne record store. I’ve even seen it pop up on sites that specialize in vinyl records Australia, which feels right for a series that traveled well beyond its UK setting.

In the end, the album reminds you why the pairing worked. Sex Education needed songs that sounded like kids trying on a dozen selves in a week. Furman writes those in her sleep, then sharpens them until they draw blood. That’s why this isn’t just a souvenir from seasons 1 and 2. It’s a proper Ezra record that happens to double as a TV memory palace, which makes the needle drops at home feel almost as good as they did the first time you heard them on screen.