I had barely started listening to Noah Kahan’s “The Great Divide” before I knew I was about to experience every emotion that could possibly be packed into an hour and 17 minutes.
Released April 24, Kahan’s latest album started out as 17 tracks before he released the extended version “The Great Divide: The Last of the Bugs” later that day with four additional songs. Exploring themes of nostalgia, emotional distance and shared trauma, Kahan’s new album is the perfect follow up to his 2022 hit “Stick Season.”
Gabe Simon, producer of “Stick Season,” stepped back in to help produce this latest record, but he wasn’t the only collaborator Kahan brought on.
Most of “The Great Divide” was recorded at Long Pond Studio with studio owner Aaron Dessner, founding member of rock band The National and duo Big Red Machine, who co-wrote and produced nine of the extended album’s 21 tracks.
Dessner, who has collaborated with artists such as Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams and Mumford & Sons, brings a rich and warm sound to Kahan’s album. He also played several instruments throughout the album including guitar, keyboard and banjo, all of which added to the record’s bittersweet feeling of looking back at the place and people that made you who you are.
Together Simon and Dessner contributed to the album’s melancholic, nostalgic soundscape, which starts from the minute you press play on opening track “End of August.” Through its folksy sonic landscape, the song sets the tone for the rest of “The Great Divide.”
Starting with ambient bug noises before introducing the gentle sounds of a piano, the song sits at just over five minutes and serves as a warm and gentle welcome back into Kahan’s world.
While “End of August” is a gentle melody about what we let go of with time, the following track, “Doors,” is a much louder and more insecure representation of the fear that you’ll lose everything, something we’ve heard Kahan sing about many times before.
I instantly connected the chorus of “Doors,” when Kahan sings “You're puttin' money on red, I'm a sure bet at a losin' streak,” to the opening lines of “Come Over” from “Stick Season,” where he says “I'm in the business of losin' your interest / And I turn a profit each time that we speak.” Not only do the songs share similarities in their symbolism of viewing relationships as risky and transactional, butboth explore similar ideas of believing you’re hard to love and having someone love you anyway.
“Doors” is not the only song that seems to be tied to “Stick Season,” though; much of “The Great Divide” feels like a response to Kahan’s breakout album.
If “Stick Season” was about the realization that it is okay to leave home, then “The Great Divide” feels like what happens when you actually do it. With songs from the perspective of someone leaving home and the people they left behind, the album is packed with a poetic guilt that undeniably proves Kahan’s songwriting capabilities.
A personal favorite of mine was “Willing and Able,” the 10th song on the extended track list. Instead of being one-sided, this song feels like a conversation between siblings: the one that left home and the one that stayed behind. While the guilt and resentment that can form when distance separates two people makes up most of the song, there is a through line of both sides saying they’re “willing and able” to mend things if the other person is.
It feels like an intimate moment Kahan is letting us peek in on, and although I spent the entirety of my first time listening to the album in tears, this was the first song to really overwhelm me and force me to take a breath.
Kahan ventured into a more folk-rock sound with “Deny Deny Deny.” While the lyrics go back to Kahan’s roots of singing about strained relationships, the song is instrumentally much more intense than his past music, featuring both electric guitar and electric mandolin.
The following song, “Headed North,” does a complete 180-turn and goes acoustic, featuring the same ambient nature noise from “End of August.” The song showed off Kahan’s musical capabilities, and I was reminded of late nights camping with my friends, highlighting the nostalgia invoked in almost every song on this album.
The album closes out with “Dan,” by far one of the happiest songs on Kahan’s new album. After 20 songs in the extended album full of heartbreak and the guilt of leaving, Kahan brings the record’s story full circle as he sings of coming home and reconnecting with loved ones, specifically his best friend Dan. The song also pays tribute to his friend Carlo, who he sang about in his 2019 song “Carlo’s Song.” Kahan said Carlo died young in a 2019 interview with Radio Free New Hampshire.
It’s a calming moment as Kahan sings “Where do we go when we die? / I wouldn't mind right here, no, I wouldn't mind at all.” And it’s a reminder that there is just as much beauty in going home as there is in leaving.
I’ve been a fan of Kahan’s music since 2018 when I heard his song “Hurt Somebody” for the first time. I have seen him live and forced countless friends to listen to his music. I’ve felt connected to so much of what he has written. And while I didn’t think my love for his music could grow, his latest album has brought me a new appreciation for Kahan as both an artist and storyteller.
If you haven’t listened to “The Great Divide” yet, take my advice and start now, because if I had the chance to listen to this album for the first time again, I would take it in a heartbeat.
