Noah Kahan’s sophomore album The Great Divide is a great excuse to cry it out! Kahan explained it best on his Jimmy Fallon appearance, “It’s pretty sad. If something’s going wrong in your life and it’s raining I recommend it.” 

It’s been a few months since this album released in late April this year. In retrospect, following this album rollout was a joy for many reasons; chief among them was seeing its story realise itself. Suddenly, its singles made sense and the sonic cohesion of the album was unfathomably clear.

From a holistic perspective, I think it’s always impressive for an artist to note what has made them uniquely successful in their previous albums and excavate that skill or sound. In Kahan’s case, it’s that folky twang based in a pop-rocky sound that carves out a really lovely story and album. 

Stick Season, and its hit single of the same name, were Kahan’s breakthrough moment. It was difficult to imagine how he could improve on that album cycle, with the way it casually fell into the charts and succeeded in crafting a curious patchwork of place. In some ways, The Great Divide does leave some element of wanting, there isn’t a great thematic distance from Stick Season. Not that visual progression is necessary for artists across every new album cycle, but with the imagery-heavy descriptions of the previous album, this one could benefit from some distinction, lest it be mistaken as a sequel to its predecessor. 

That would be a deep shame, because if Stick Season was the patchwork, The Great Divide is an artwork painted with more care and deliberation. It’s evident from the track sequencing alone how Kahan paid closer attention to the creation of a narrative—this is significant for an artist who, historically, had become almost synonymous with location-based albums. By that I mean how previous albums have heavily featured New England (his hometown), at least in a figurative sense. Now, rather than allowing the location to dictate the people, Kahan is now carving out the people who populate the places. Using this character study-like structure, he’s able to employ human interaction and dialogue as the basis for his lyrics. 

“Everything you see out here will die,” he observes, “it’s a matter of time…”. It’s all matter-of-fact to Kahan, who, despite all this resigned conviction, spends most of the album decidedly stuck in the very human emotions that will eventually fizzle out. 

Another strength of this album is just that: it doesn’t shy away from the multitude of perspectives that make up a place. This is the Stick Season sound amplified, and an author with many characters. At once, Kahan is a sombre sibling, a complaining customer, and a hometown homebody viewing his fame from the outside—among many, many other people. 

These personas allow for many standouts in the album. “Staying Still” is a fan favourite—in fact, when the first version of the album came out, there was great uproar about the absence of this song. Admittedly, the uproar was worth it, the chorus has a catchy hook, offsetting the off-beat melody of the verses. “Orbiter” is a viral sensation, probably for its beautiful instrumental and deeply vulnerable lyrics. Written for his mother after losing the Best New Artist Grammy, Kahan seemingly gives us a peak behind the curtain of that night and how his mother allowed him to continue moving forward. It’s not just that night though—this song explores the fundamental instability in the industry, and how he uncovers the true importance of human connection and humility at the centre of it. 

“American Cars” is the peak of his character-based songwriting. What is done right is done perfectly in this song—with its American heartland feel rocking it forward and creating a strong, beautiful foundation for him to beg his sister to come home and fix a deteriorating relationship with an aging parent. There’s a casual, sibling-familiarity with which Kahan asks her to return, recognising this is a big request but asking casually nonetheless. I love the teasing nod to not knowing she “drove American cars” and her Ray Bans before soberly recognising that only she can fix this. A unique type of emotional turbulence shared only with siblings. 

“We Go Way Back” is Noah Kahan’s self-proclaimed underrated classic. Notably, he switched it out of the setlist on his ongoing Great Divide Tour due to higher demand for “Willing and Able”. I say it was on that first setlist for a reason, though. It is a beautiful, Kahanian ballad; plucky guitar strings paired with his clean falsetto. Worth listening to in order to access a nostalgic love you forgot you could feel. 

And my personal favourite, which certainly deserves its flowers: “All Them Horses”. I can’t say anything normal about this song. Everything seems to come out ramble-y and falls short of how truly beautifully it captures a deep sadness, especially knowing it was written on the heels of the 2023 Vermont floods. It’s also—notably—one of the only songs on the album that seeks to do that character-based songwriting on the songwriter himself. “I’m just happy you still call,” compliments his loneliness, “I’m always on my own”. The “divide” appears between him and his hometown, and the connections he built there are forged with great depth, over all 5 minutes and 17 seconds of the song. It makes it one of the longest on the album, and one that hits closest to home.

I love this line from “All Them Horses”: “Done staring at the void / I’m spin-castin’ with the boys,”—almost asking, what does it amount to? If “everything you see out here will die,” and “I’m always on my own,” and the horses facing their inevitable demise “do not look scared at all” —why did we just spend an entire album dissecting human emotions?

I think Kahan answers this in The Great Divide’s final track. It’s a quite simple premise: the singer is with his “best friend Dan, now” and he makes a crucial adjustment to a statement made in “All Them Horses”: “We’re so alone most of the time/ Most of the time, we don’t have anyone.” The clarification that he’s not actually always on his own, is essential. Also essential? Answering the resignation he opened the album with: “everything you see out here will die,” it is true, but what about after that? After all this humanity and sadness and anger, what remains? 

Simply, he answers: “Where do we go when we die / I wouldn’t mind right here / I wouldn’t mind at all.” And that’s it, isn’t it? We feel what we feel with the people around us and finally, we turn to where we are, to the place of the story, with which Kahan is all too familiar: “Don’t the sky look pretty out here?” Ending on this note means The Great Divide ultimately closes the gap imagined in its title as being filled by the simplicity and patience that follows tumultuous and rich human emotion.