A couple of months ago, my friends, sister, and I got on a facetime call as we waited in the Ticketmaster line for tickets to either the Philadelphia or Washington D.C. concert. Even with the five of us, the closest we got was seeing the seating chart before Ticketmaster glitched out, and we weren’t able to get tickets (a fact I mourn everyday as I contemplate buying them from an overpriced reseller on Facebook or a sketchy website).
I’ve been a Noah Kahan fan for years and years now, since the beginning of high school. I’ve listened to every rendition of his Stick Season album and there are songs from his 2019 Busyhead album on my playlist. And I’ve been waiting for his new album, The Great Divide, to come out since he first announced it. It’s been circled on my calendar for months.
The day I’m writing this, April 24th, is the day the album came out, and I’ve already listened to it on repeat three times, cried twice, and picked out my favorites. There are 17 songs in total and listening to the whole album runs about an hour and 15 minutes.
It’s honestly a masterpiece. I love folk music, and it is always amazing to see the way Noah Kahan modernizes it. I think this album is definitely a step up from his previous ones, as it takes on themes of leaving home, of disappointing friends and family, of love, and of loneliness. I don’t think I’d skip a single song right now, but of course that’s coming from a very biased perspective. Ask me again in a month and maybe I’ll have a different answer, but, for now, the album is a breath of fresh air (even though many of the songs are very sad).
My personal favorite is All Them Horses, which hits hard as an out of state college student going to Jefferson, where everyone seems to go home during the weekends and I often find myself homesick. Some of my other favorite songs include American Cars, Porch Light (which was released a couple of weeks ago), Deny Deny Deny, and Dashboard.
If you’ve got some free time, definitely give the album a good listen and be prepared to feel some hard emotions. Noah Kahan is one of the best songwriters in this generation, and I can’t wait to see what else he makes.