Photo via Summerfest
Noga Erez
Hailing from Israel, a nation not a known for producing internationally marketed chart pop, might seem like a distinction for Noga Erez. But it reads more like a supplementary distinction for the singer-rapper who got an early career boost when her glitchy commentary on street violence in her homeland, “Dance While You Shoot,” was incorporated into a TV ad for Apple Music.
That number and much of her 2017 debut album, Off the Radar, reflects political concerns geographically close to her and the world over. With her coded editorializing set to discordant, but often danceable electronic backdrops, the cumulative effect positioned her as a Middle Eastern counterpart to Sri Lanka's global musical agitator, M.I.A.
Erez doesn't exactly mellow out sonically on last year's Kids, but she does transform to a more textually personal performer. That turn to matters less policy-related makes her more simpatico to listeners of Fiona Apple, Lorde and Billie Eilish who remade Top 40 and alt rock radio airwaves into havens for confessionally transparent and conflicted femininity. Erez's contribution to that wave comes not only from the perspective of living in a country that’s been at war all her life, but a hard-edged musicality processing the noisiest of the latest hip-hop and synthetic indie into something that's becoming increasingly widely appreciated.
