For Your Consideration: Ezra Furman’s Twelve Nudes as Multifaceted Depiction of What It’s Like to Be Trans

This piece was originally published as part of the Indieheads forums’ annual Album of the Year write-up series, where users write about their favorite albums from the year that passed, on December 14, 2019. In this piece, Co-Editor Nat talks about their personal link to local Boston-area musician Ezra Furman‘s thunderous Twelve Nudes and how it resonated with her experience living as a nonbinary transgender person.

ALBUM REVIEW: Le Butcherettes deliver anthemic punk on the dualism of struggle and strength on “bi/MENTAL”

The moment it all clicks into place for me comes midway through the album, on a track called “in/THE END.” This, itself, is an irony onto itself, putting a song with that title smack into the middle of the tracklisting. But the real moment of truth, during my second full listen of the album, happens as the song transitions from its modest opening stretches — a filtered harmonization, between two voices made to sound somewhat childlike, backed by soft distorted guitar and light keyboard, already an anomaly among the album’s guitar-heavy slant backed by deep synths — into a boldly expansive mid-tempo rock ballad. It’s unexpected, but fits in entirely with what Le Butcherettes do as a whole on bi/MENTAL.

REVIEW: Jordaan Mason explores identity, community, and mental health in a depressing, confusing time on “Earth to Ursa Major”

There’s a moment two-thirds through Jordaan Mason’s earth to ursa major, on the reprise of “it does not get better,” that acts as reiteration, reversal, and progression all at once. The first “it does not get better” on the album is filled with uncertainty, a plea for companionship in a time where “it just gets heavier” the more time passes and the more dreadful circumstances the world piles on. But the reprise of this song culminates in a twist of the refrain to a more hopeful slant: “if it does not get better / at least we’ll be together.”