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.