Noga Erez made a huge impression with her album ‘KIDS’ in 2021, garnering a legion of fans across the globe and sold-out headline concerts across the globe. Erez is back with her third studio album ‘The Vandalist’, which was released this past Friday to much anticipation. The album is a satirical yet confessional look at real and online life, while embodying the strength to stand up and retain one’s identity during times of adversity.
Erez stated, “I think that ‘The Vandalist’ is me. I’m ‘The Vandalist’ but also it’s a part of me. There’s a lot of self-definition in this album and self-inquiry and I think that the part of me that I like to call ‘The Vandalist’ is the part that instead of taking the path of sadness and frustration of how the world seems unfair sometimes, it takes the path of F you.” She stated, “I like that because there’s something very empowering about that but it’s not always who I am. I think ‘The Vandalist’ is a part of me that can hold this very strong defense mechanism because I am eventually very sensitive and things really touch me. I think that trying to be badass about it every now and then or just joke about it, is a healthy way to go about things.” Many of the songs on the album take a satirical yet confessional look at real and online life with songs that include “GODMOTHER (feat. Eden Ben Zaken),” “AYAYAY (feat. Dillom),” “PC People (feat. ROUSSO),” title track “Vandalist,” and “Come Back Home.”
Material for the album had already been written and mostly recorded before the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Noting the difficulties with currently being an Israeli artist during such tragedy that still continues, “The past year has been really rough in my home country, which is Israel. We all know what that is about and that influenced that as well. I feel like life has become more extreme and that the scale is has widened so much so, it requires me to cover more emotions and more colors in myself.” More recently, Erez has found the power of her artistry in helping others, “All the new things that I’ve learned and experienced, I spent three, four, five months since October 7th performing in crazy situations to people, who had just been through hell, met people in many situations.” She stated, “I found I slowly rediscovered the power of music because of that, but it took that time for me to be able to come back to any sort of creativity.”
Noga Erez speaks with B-Sides host Pete Mar about her new album ‘The Vandalist’, its themes of dealing with hardships with strength to survive, the challenges of creating art amidst the current political strife and more.
