My love and admiration for Ezra Furman is well-documented in these digital pages, so no need to get into that again. Quite simply, he’s the best American lyricist working today and it’s not close. Just this morning he announced he’s signed with Bella Union (Flaming Lips, Beach House) and released the first single off the new Ezra Furman & The Boy-Friends album due this summer.

“Restless Year” isn’t really like anything else we’ve heard from Furman since splitting from The Harpoons. It almost sounds like Jim Morrison leading Bow Wow Wow through Dead Milkmen covers, which isn’t a bad thing at all. Despite some of the morbid lyrics, it actually feels kind of sunny compared to songs like “I Wanna Destroy Myself” or “Tell Em All To Go To Hell.”

Listening to Furman’s voice always brings a smile to my face, but that smile turns into a sort of maniacal glee when he delivers lines like “Death is my former employer. Death is my own Tom Sawyer. Death waits for me to destroy her. I never wanna die and I never grow older.”

If this single doesn’t get you excited for a new album, I don’t know what will. Before the record drops you can catch the band at Subterannean in Chicago. Tickets here for the April 8 show.