Noga Erez

The world is ending, and NOGA EREZ has a few suggestions.Keep the deliveries coming. Reach for Prozac or chocolate. Find reassurance ina fortune cookie. On ‘People, I hope you know the world is ending.,’ the firstsingle from her fourth album, DUCK SEASON, she serves up familiarescape routes with a reassuring smile and a melody you can already hear a crowdsinging back to her. Shopping, chemical comforts, compulsory optimism:everything we reach for to make reality easier to ignore is available here. Andthe song keeps smiling as the picture gets darker, capturing the spirit of arecord where pleasure and unease share a beat, jokes land dangerously close tohome, and even the most swaggering voice can crack.

With the ingenious hooks, mischievousproduction and irresistible rhythms that have become the signature of Erez andher longtime creative and life partner, songwriter and producer Ori Rousso, DUCK SEASON may be theirmost 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 THEVANDALIST embraced darker experimentation and the happy accidentsof the studio, DUCKSEASON takes on a more cinematic quality, with each song creatingits own vivid, sometimes unsettling world. Since Off The Radar, Erez’s2017 debut, her exhilarating, genre-transgressive approach has won her a longlist 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 aswiftly viral representation of her and her band’s commitment. Throughout allthis, she and Rousso have written their music and lyrics together, with theirrelationship sometimes inspiring their most intimate songs, a bond alsoexplored in the new documentary, Noga.

Now to the elephant in the room: Noga Erez is the world’s mostsuccessful Israeli musician, which does, inevitably, make her Israeli. Forsome, 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 nowviewed by much of the world with anger and revulsion, Erez has been outspokenabout its leadership since the start of her career, both through her music andon the streets, protesting. She also asks uncomfortable questions about thehostility directed at her and fellow Israelis, including from those who, likeher, oppose their government and its actions. What happens when nationality istaken as a declaration of belief, when someone’s birthplace speaks louder thananything they actually say or do? Having faced protests, cancellations,boycotts and death threats, Erez has lived those questions. They permeate DUCKSEASON – a title she’s had in mind since 2023 – and its exploration ofidentity, 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, nowliving in London in exile, his homeland remains in conflict with hers, buthosts one of her biggest audiences. “It’s the wild Wild West,” Erezannounces, “but we’re from the Middle East.” This is a knowingdeclaration 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 thatcomplexity: the track is named after Shlomi Shabbat, an Israeli of TurkishJewish descent who’s sampled at its start, a reminder that her country isitself populated by immigrants and refugees.

Throughout DUCK SEASON, Erez shifts from herimmediate environment to the world at large, inextricably linking the two. On “CallYour Mommy,” she raps about sticking to one’s principles, while “Checkmate”tackles the forces seeking to control us, from the personal information wefreely share to the societal pressures entrapping us. “PABLO” crosses borders,on this occasion generational, its painful observations stirred by her fatherand their country’s past – “He calls it destiny / I call it history / Weboth make it repeat” – while its playful rhythms are bolstered by militarychants. If the title track, moreover, acknowledges despair, Erez mocks ideas ofconcealing this behind a stiff upper lip: “He says, ‘Come run with me’ / Isay ‘PTSD.’“

On “My Car,” vibrant brass backs Erez’s refusal to let othersclaim 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 shortcomingsas 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 thedoor as furious old-school beats and guitars pay tribute to Beastie Boys andRage Against The Machine. She even plays a chilling femme fatale, amidMorricone-esque chimes and Hazlewoodian twangs, on the frankly murderous “November.”No wonder the sinister “Dollar Bill” reaches its sober conclusion: “I’llnever heal / Till I finally come clean.” Few are as candid about drugs asshe and her guest, Cara Delevingne.

At times, too, Erez is blunter still. The militant “You And WhatARMY?” scorns those whose intimidation reduced her identity to a passport, yet stillit clings to an idealistic belief in a shared humanity: “You can call menaive, but I’m right.” The family portrait on the album’s cover gives thatshared humanity an intimate frame: we belong to families, communities andcountries, but those smaller units offer no exemption from a common fate. This convictionruns 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 thepeople we doing the time / Gonna send these oppressors a draft / You and yourkids to the frontline.”

DUCK SEASON might as well have been called Open Season: to shoot firsthas become habitual, with questions as good as obsolete. By the closing track, “HumanSeason,” the implication is wider still: humanity itself is next in thehunters’ sights. Leaving us with the head spinning sound of Portishead andRadiohead on a malfunctioning carousel, she offers one final blast ofunconventional honesty: “God knows if I’m not real with you / No love / I’mso scared / Almost shit my pants / I do my best / It makes no sense.”

With an optimism bordering on – yes – naiveté, Noga Erez invitesus to wake from the illusion we are separate, and to hell with the labels thatkeep us that way. “We’re going down together…“

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