Singer-songwriter Hila Ruach says she has long been cast as the “weird” or “edgy” one, but on her new album, "Shachor Zohar" (“Black Glow”), she turns personal and collective darkness into something luminous. The album came out at the end of February, just before the latest confrontation with Iran, and its launch show at the Barby in Jaffa was first postponed from March because of the war and later rescheduled for next Tuesday, when it sold out. A second show is set for September 19.
Ruach, 41, says the record was written before the war but feels made for it. “The heart, the communal heart, became a kind of charcoal,” she says, adding that she feared becoming a person who could only survive rather than create. She describes the album as more inward than her earlier work, and says she was “very scared” before its release, more than with any previous record. Still, the response surprised her: “I got love in quantities.”
The interview ties the album to the repeated cycles of war in Israel, from the 2025 conflict with Iran to the latest 17-hour escalation earlier this month. In the title track, Ruach sings about fear and wanting, then lands on resignation and action, “You have to improvise,” and “I’ll bring it.” In the song “Tiviu Yoter” (“Bring More”), she sings cynically about living through “war, escalation, plague,” and says the line “I didn’t have time to say bye to Rabin” reflects how Yitzhak Rabin represented a lost political horizon for her since his assassination.
Ruach says the album’s framing as indie or alternative is less important to her than the fact that she keeps moving slowly and steadily. She says her music is gaining a new audience, and that her long relationship with musician Costa Kaplan, who also plays in her world and co-wrote “Tirim Ta’Rosh,” remains close and creatively intertwined. The album also features guests Nuno, Noga, and Kaplan, while Yehali Sobol helped edit and sharpen the lyrics.
Asked what comes next, Ruach jokes that only aliens could solve the mess. She says she would prefer a world without the internet, calling it a major source of problems.
