On The Verge

Ezra Furman & The Harpoons

Chicago, Ill.
Indie Shapeshifters
www.ezrafurman.com

“Usually, we try to make a ruckus,” says the namesake of Ezra Furman & The Harpoons. “Our band oscillates wildly between the poles of intimacy and intensity.” The group came together in 2006 while in college when frontman Furman got tired of “not being in a rock and roll band” and the rest of the group was tired of being in cover bands. These days, Furman describes his band’s sound as: “Fast. Slow. Too honest. Bipolar.” He called the group The Harpoons because “I wanted to arm myself for a long voyage,” he says, adding that their guitarist at the time was also reading passages aloud from Moby Dick. The quartet draws influence from The Beatles, Bob Dylan, late-‘70s New York punk bands and The Replacements. He’s also inspired by watching other musicians play live: “I cannot help but start messing around with a guitar to see if I can make something that will let me be publicly alive like that,” he says. “You have to go deep and drag the art out of yourself kicking and screaming, and never rest.” With their third studio LP Mysterious Power, the group “treated it like a beloved child” and tried a lot of new things. “Sometimes we play nice and quiet songs and sometimes we go crazy,” he says. “We like to melt both faces and hearts.”