BELLA498CD
Release Date: 6 July 2015
Perpetual Motion People was recorded with Furman’s current band The Boyfriends – comprising Jorgen Jorgensen (bass), Ben Joseph (keyboards, guitar), Sam Durkes (drums) and saxophonist Tim Sandusky – at studio Ballistico in Furman’s home city of Chicago (though she’s currently based in San Francisco). The album kicks off with ‘Restless Year’, about which Consequence Of Sound described as, “a ball of energy, bouncing around genre borders with glee. There’s the rebellion of ’90s indie rock, a string of sunshine-y ’80s pop, and the snarl of ’70s punk.”
“The opening lines of my records tend to be summary statements,” says Furman. “Every year has been restless, physically and even more internally.” Hence the title Perpetual Motion People, “That’s who it was made by and that’s who it’s for. People who feel they can never settle. I’m restless in most aspects. I don’t tend to live in one place for long. I am always changing the way I present my gender. My religious life is intensely up and down in terms of observance and personal convictions. I’ve always viewed the idea of truth itself as something wobbly, always slipping out of our grasp. That’s what the songs are about: a head that is haunted, a society I cannot join, a lover who is perpetually in the act of leaving. A central idea is the fugitive or runaway, in a hideout built in the midst of an unfriendly or alienated world.”
“The other aspect is a feeling of expansiveness, the largeness of emotion, from joy to pain. Some people think life is small or confined, but to me it’s just big, and I’d say each song has something to say, to declare themselves large. It’s also to do with trying to make something that a lot of people would listen to after Day Of The Dog got some kind of increased attention.”
In that, she’s done her job, switching from the sinewy jubilance of ‘Hark! To The Music’ to the wistful heart-ache of ‘Ordinary Life’, from the power-pop snarl of ‘Tip Of The Match’ to the wracked country blues of “One Day I Will Sin No More”. The waterfront covered marks Furman out as a true original, tapping avenues of music that most others have left alone, or wouldn’t have the guts to emulate. “There’s rarely been a scene that I’ve wanted to be part of,” she admits. “I’m just not hearing other stuff out there that I wish existed, so that’s my goal, to do it myself.
Ultimately, Furman declares, life in perpetual motion is, “a good way to be. If you are never on a sure footing you don’t get bored and the world is always new. It causes a lot of pain as well, but it seems worth it, and it is probably the only way I know how to be.”