Noga Erez
The world is ending, and NOGA EREZ has a few suggestions.
Keep the deliveries coming. Reach for Prozac or chocolate. Find reassurance in
a fortune cookie. On 'People, I hope you know the world is ending.,' the first
single from her fourth album, DUCK SEASON, she serves up familiar
escape routes with a reassuring smile and a melody you can already hear a crowd
singing back to her. Shopping, chemical comforts, compulsory optimism:
everything we reach for to make reality easier to ignore is available here. And
the song keeps smiling as the picture gets darker, capturing the spirit of a
record where pleasure and unease share a beat, jokes land dangerously close to
home, and even the most swaggering voice can crack.
With the ingenious hooks, mischievous
production and irresistible rhythms that have become the signature of Erez and
her longtime creative and life partner, songwriter and producer Ori Rousso, DUCK SEASON may be their
most accessible album yet. But it's also the most personal and confrontational,
balancing sharp social commentary with moments of vulnerability and compassion.
Where 2024's THE
VANDALIST embraced darker experimentation and the happy accidents
of the studio, DUCK
SEASON takes on a more cinematic quality, with each song creating
its own vivid, sometimes unsettling world. Since Off The Radar, Erez's
2017 debut, her exhilarating, genre-transgressive approach has won her a long
list of high-profile fans, among them Missy Elliott, who appeared on 2022's "Nails,"
Billie Eilish, who called her "amazing," and Robbie Williams, who dubbed her
"The Queen." She secured more still at Coachella 2026, her bloodied nose a
swiftly viral representation of her and her band's commitment. Throughout all
this, she and Rousso have written their music and lyrics together, with their
relationship sometimes inspiring their most intimate songs, a bond also
explored in the new documentary, Noga.
Now to the elephant in the room: Noga Erez is the world's most
successful Israeli musician, which does, inevitably, make her Israeli. For
some, that may be reason enough to close the tab, but for those still here,
there's a more layered, revealing story. Born and raised in a country now
viewed by much of the world with anger and revulsion, Erez has been outspoken
about its leadership since the start of her career, both through her music and
on the streets, protesting. She also asks uncomfortable questions about the
hostility directed at her and fellow Israelis, including from those who, like
her, oppose their government and its actions. What happens when nationality is
taken as a declaration of belief, when someone's birthplace speaks louder than
anything they actually say or do? Having faced protests, cancellations,
boycotts and death threats, Erez has lived those questions. They permeate DUCK
SEASON - a title she's had in mind since 2023 - and its exploration of
identity, belonging and the struggle to be heard on your own terms.
Those complexities are there from the opening track, "Shabbat,"
which features Hichkas, the godfather of Persian rap. Originally from Iran, now
living in London in exile, his homeland remains in conflict with hers, but
hosts one of her biggest audiences. "It's the wild Wild West," Erez
announces, "but we're from the Middle East." This is a knowing
declaration of nerve: when you come from the world's most complicated region,
it takes a lot to scare you. Even her choice of samples engages with that
complexity: the track is named after Shlomi Shabbat, an Israeli of Turkish
Jewish descent who's sampled at its start, a reminder that her country is
itself populated by immigrants and refugees.
Throughout DUCK SEASON, Erez shifts from her
immediate environment to the world at large, inextricably linking the two. On "Call
Your Mommy," she raps about sticking to one's principles, while "Checkmate"
tackles the forces seeking to control us, from the personal information we
freely share to the societal pressures entrapping us. "PABLO" crosses borders,
on this occasion generational, its painful observations stirred by her father
and their country's past - "He calls it destiny / I call it history / We
both make it repeat" - while its playful rhythms are bolstered by military
chants. If the title track, moreover, acknowledges despair, Erez mocks ideas of
concealing this behind a stiff upper lip: "He says, 'Come run with me' / I
say 'PTSD.'"
On "My Car," vibrant brass backs Erez's refusal to let others
claim ownership of her meaning: "Don't jack my car / Steal from me."
Erez, however, is always as eager to point the finger at her own shortcomings
as at anyone else's. "Platinum Grill" skewers celebrity's trivial escapism, recognizing its pull as much as its soul-destroying aftermath, and on "Hitchcock"
she cautions, "Here comes the psycho!" to the ominous sound of a knock on the
door as furious old-school beats and guitars pay tribute to Beastie Boys and
Rage Against The Machine. She even plays a chilling femme fatale, amid
Morricone-esque chimes and Hazlewoodian twangs, on the frankly murderous "November."
No wonder the sinister "Dollar Bill" reaches its sober conclusion: "I'll
never heal / Till I finally come clean." Few are as candid about drugs as
she and her guest, Cara Delevingne.
At times, too, Erez is blunter still. The militant "You And What
ARMY?" scorns those whose intimidation reduced her identity to a passport, yet still
it clings to an idealistic belief in a shared humanity: "You can call me
naive, but I'm right." The family portrait on the album's cover gives that
shared humanity an intimate frame: we belong to families, communities and
countries, but those smaller units offer no exemption from a common fate. This conviction
runs through a crucial verse in the song: "We human, don't matter the side /
Caught in a battle we don't wanna fight / It's heads doing the crimes / We the
people we doing the time / Gonna send these oppressors a draft / You and your
kids to the frontline."
DUCK SEASON might as well have been called Open Season: to shoot first
has become habitual, with questions as good as obsolete. By the closing track, "Human
Season," the implication is wider still: humanity itself is next in the
hunters' sights. Leaving us with the head spinning sound of Portishead and
Radiohead on a malfunctioning carousel, she offers one final blast of
unconventional honesty: "God knows if I'm not real with you / No love / I'm
so scared / Almost shit my pants / I do my best / It makes no sense."
With an optimism bordering on - yes - naiveté, Noga Erez invites
us to wake from the illusion we are separate, and to hell with the labels that
keep us that way. "We're going down together..."
- Website:
- https://www.nogaerez.com/
- TikTok:
- https://www.tiktok.com/@nogaerez
- Facebook:
- https://www.facebook.com/NogaErezMusic
- Instagram:
- https://www.instagram.com/nogaerez/
- YouTube:
- https://www.youtube.com/@NogaErezMusic
- X:
- https://x.com/nogaerez