The new master of the American Whine: Ezra Furman, at Edinburgh Festival, reviewed

The American Whine is one of the key vocal registers in rock and roll. You can trace that thin disaffected quaver through the decades from the Shangri-Las to Lou Reed, from Jonathan Richman to Neil Young. Inveigling, needy, smart-assed, it’s as vital a part of the DNA of the medium as a black leather jacket and a souped-up Chevrolet.

Ezra Furman, I’m pleased to report, is in possession of a vintage whine. Furman is a Jewish transgender woman who composes with compassion, wit, empathy and anger from those particular personal viewpoints. She wrote the soundtrack to Netflix blockbuster Sex Education and has just released an eloquent sixth solo album, All Of Us Flames.

In many respects she would no doubt consider herself an iconoclast, a necessary corrective to conventional mores. Musically, however, Furman is every inch a rock and roll classicist. The tension between these two positions lends her music a thrilling air of jeopardy, a sense of rules being acknowledged while simultaneously being broken. Performing with a four-piece band – two guitars, bass and keyboards; but of course – her set at the Edinburgh International Festival is essentially a breakneck tour through the pitstops of American street music, from girl-group sass to raucous garage-rock to heartland AOR.

‘I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend’ is woozy doo-wop. ‘Love You So Bad’ is punchy power-pop, somewhere between the Cars and the Replacements’ gonzo-rock. ‘I Saw The Truth Undressing’ is Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ on three wheels and downers. ‘Forever in Sunset’ is as taut, melodic and gloriously cheesy as mid-1980s Springsteen. ‘Transition From Nowhere to Nowhere’ slips though the gears like the Pixies at their most puckish. ‘Train Comes Through’ is a slow-building Dylanesque parable which seems to announce the ascension of Furman’s writing to some new high place.