Ezra Furman is set to play Ireland, with gigs lined up in Dublin and Cork. It promises to be one of the most intriguing short tours of the year.
Here's the PR pitch on an artist who is genuinely challenging in his approach to his art: "Crossing between love, gender, sexuality and religion, and singing in solidarity with the innocent, persecuted, oppressed and threatened Ezra Furman provides a soundtrack for the current fear and loathing in America like no other."

Widely rated as a phenomenal live performer and deft lyricist, Ezra Furman – originally from Chicago – made three albums with his band The Harpoons, before releasing a crowdfunded solo record. The follow-up Day of the Dog hit trecord stores in late 2013. Furman followed that in 2015 with the critically-acclaimed record Perpetual Motion People  – the latter two records were made with his band The Boyfriends.

His latest album, Transangelic Exodus is with a “new” band The Visions. Ezra Furman's second album for Bella Union, it has been hailed as a new 'landmark' for the American singer-songwriter. It's “not a concept record," Furman himself says, "but almost a novel, or a cluster of stories on a theme, a combination of fiction and a half-true memoir. A personal companion for a paranoid road trip. A queer outlaw saga.”

If that doesn't sound sufficiently intriguing, well, that may be your problem. Ezra Furman plays Cypress Avenue, Cork on Tuesday, 23 July; and the Button Factory, Dublin on Wednesday, 24 July.