On April 24, Noah Kahan released his fourth studio album, The Great Divide. Coming more than three and a half years after his last major album, and more than two years after his last song release, The Great Divide was long-awaited. In an Instagram post on Jan. 28, Kahan announced the upcoming album release, stating, “The songs are the words I would say if I could. They are the fears I dance with in the moments before I drift off to sleep. The music here is my best attempt to delve deeper into the people, places, and feelings that have made me who I am.”
Similar to his previous album, Stick Season, the songs on The Great Divide fall into Noah Kahan’s signature folk-pop style, with many of them leaning more towards folk than the previous songs of his that I’ve listened to. The album sits at a perfect length with seventeen songs lasting around an hour and a quarter in total. Aside from “The Great Divide” and “Porch Light,” the album’s two singles, Kahan has played some of the other songs live before, including “Deny, Deny, Deny,” “American Cars” and “Paid Time Off.”
One of my favorite songs of the album was its starting track, “End of August.” It felt like a continuation of the story told in “The View Between Villages,” the final song on Kahan’s previous album. In “The View Between Villages,” Kahan sings, “As the last of the bugs / Leave their homes again,” which is referenced to in “End of August” when he adds, “Endin’ of August the bugs are just starting to die.” The song is mainly backed by a piano track and the sounds of the outdoors, as opposed to his usual guitar-led backings. This was an immediate standout, and it remained in my head as I listened to the rest of the album.
Throughout The Great Divide, Kahan frequently returns to singing from the perspective of friends and family back in Vermont who want him to come back. “Porch Light,” the album’s second single, is sung from the perspective of his mom, who leaves the porch light on each night in hopes that he will come back, only to be the one who has to turn it off in the morning. Similarly, “Downfall” and “American Cars” discuss how Kahan’s fame weighs on his loved ones. The narrator in “Downfall” prays for his downfall so that Kahan may return home, whereas the speaker in “American Cars” sees Kahan as changed by fame now that he drives American cars and wears fancy sunglasses.
Two days after Kahan’s announcement that he would be releasing a new album, he released “The Great Divide,” its first single and title track. The song discusses someone the narrator used to be friends with but drifted apart from, especially after the friend went through struggles that the narrator was unable to see. My favorite line of the song is “I heard nothing but the bass in every ballad that you played / While you swore to God the singer read your mind.” It captured the disconnect between the two friends perfectly, and the regret that Kahan felt while looking back on this moment. The song’s instrumentation was amazing — while I do love his quieter, slower songs, the layering of the vocals, heavy drums and guitar in “The Great Divide” gave the song a fresh feel compared to the rest of his discography. Towards the end of the song, the music slows down and cuts out to just Kahan’s vocals before coming back stronger than before.
I really liked the stripped-back sound of “Willing and Able” and “We Go Way Back,” both of which had similar sounds to Kahan’s Cape Elizabeth EP. However, on the flip side, I loved the more layered feel in “The Great Divide.” I also liked that many of the songs on this album, especially “Doors” and “Haircut,” felt faster-paced than many of his popular songs. The musical range on this album made it feel dynamic and helped the songs stand out from each other.
“Headed North,” the 13th track, felt a little off-kilter. The guitar style felt reminiscent of 1960s pop, unlike Kahan’s usual folk pop style. The voice notes at the beginning and end of the song made it feel incredibly intimate, as if Kahan had invited listeners into his recording studio. The final track, “Dan,” also had a strange sound to it, but Kahan’s lyric, “I’m with my best friend Dan now” hit me unexpectedly, making the track one of my favorites of the album.
Overall, the entire album was thought-out and produced extremely well. With a few more listens, some of the songs have the potential to become my favorites of his discography. In a time when record companies sometimes prioritize profit over quality, I find that many new albums — especially by large artists — have a few songs that seem to have been quickly put together in an attempt to speed up the album’s release. Yet, none of the songs on The Great Divide felt this way. I can confidently say that the several years we spent waiting for this album were well-spent by Kahan. As he said in his announcement for the first single, “Anything great is worth the wait.”
Katherine Winton is a member of the Class of 2029 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a staff writer for the Arts & Culture department and can be reached at kwinton@cornellsun.com.
