The Great Anticipation: Awaiting The Great Divide by Noah Kahan

As of March 24th, a couple of days ago, we are officially one month away from new Noah Kahan music. Finally! Kahan’s acclaimed album Stick Season catapulted the Vermont folk singer into stardom upon its release in 2022. Over the past years since the album’s release, Kahan has been releasing bonus tracks and collaborated on new versions of his songs with artists from Post Malone to Kacey Musgraves to Hozier. While all of these spins on his original music are great, fans like myself have been itching for a new album for years. 

This wish was granted when Kahan released his first single and the title track of his new album on January 30th of this year. Like all of Kahan’s songs, The Great Divide paints a story through drum beats and guitar chords. The song starts out and crescendos to a booming chorus that makes you feel like you could sprint forever. The lyrics express Kahan looking back at his past, whether it’s a past relationship or his childhood in general. As an adult, he can now clearly see the error in his ways and professes his hope and wishes for the future. This message resonates with the album cover, which depicts two young boys running outside which we see through a glass window. This image also represents the idea of looking back at the past from a matured outlook on the time period. 

A few weeks ago, Kahan released the second single for his album on March 16th, called Porch Light. This song feels more acoustic to me than The Great Divide, with the strums of the guitar more prominent. According to Kahan’s press release, the song is written from the perspective of his mother. The song gained a whole new meaning for me once I listened to it after reading this. From Kahan’s point of view, it is about his family dealing with the pressures of newfound fame the artist brought to his family. However, it can be applied to all types of circumstances and relationships between parents and their children. 

While we often look at the past through rose-colored glasses or with a lens of nostalgia, the songs and cover illustrate that looking back from a more mature perspective can also reveal traumas or mistakes that we missed. They could have been subconsciously blocked out or just a moment that was lost to our memories. These two songs give a preview of what lies ahead for Kahan’s fourth studio album and I could not be more excited to listen and interpret Kahan’s words. 

• music
• noah kahan
• Porch light
• stick season
• The Great Divide