Singer-songwriter Noah Kahan released his fourth studio album, The Great Divide, on August 24. The album opens with a gorgeous piano backtracked by the calming sound of crickets on the song “End of August.” If you were like me and you stayed up until midnight to listen to the album as soon as it was released, you most likely also felt like this song was trying to make lull you to sleep right off the bat. Halfway through the song, though, Kahan’s volume crescendos and the pace of his singing and the piano speed up in a burst of a realization: change is inevitable, no matter how painful it can be.
“End of August” is the perfect introduction to the thesis of the album. On The Great Divide, Kahan grapples with the space between– the space between who he used to be and who he is becoming, the space between himself and different people in his life, and the space between who he is now and who he wants to be in the future. The end of August represents that space, as it is a transition from the spring and summer seasons to the fall and winter seasons.
One of the (many) things I love about Kahan’s music is how his audience can interpret his songs in many different ways based on their own life experiences. This is especially impressive after watching the documentary about his life since Stick Season, Noah Kahan: Out of Body. We see that his writing is very explicitly related to his own personal experiences, yet it is relatable to so many of his listeners. This can be attributed to Kahan’s masterful, poetic song lyrics. As a writer and a poet, Kahan is one of my greatest inspirations. I listen to his music and just marvel at his metaphors and his incredible ability to capture the human experience.
Kahan teased many of the songs on The Great Divide long before the album was even announced. While some might think that he “spoiled” it or “revealed too much,” I thought this was a great move on his part because every single snippet he released was an example of his genius songwriting. A few of these songs are my favorites on the album, like “Doors,” “The Great Divide,” and “Dashboard.”
When Kahan teased the second verse of the song “Doors,” I immediately knew it was going to be one of my favorite songs of all time. “Doors” is a depiction of what it’s like to finally find someone who loves you for who you are, the bad and the good. After being left over and over again and being told it’s your fault, you block people out. You expect them to leave. In the chorus, Kahan sings, “I keep showin’ you doors, but you can’t open them up / ‘Cause it gets harder to see me the closer you try to look.” This urge to not let anyone get close enough to see you is immediately followed by, “I just live here, babe, but you’re the one who decided to knock / You knocked.” Despite the singer’s flaws and insecurities, their partner keeps pushing to be let in because they want to work on it together.
When I heard the second verse for the first time, I instantly started crying. The lyrics, “So, forgive me if I jump / at the rattle of your keys / ‘Oh, are you leavin’?,’ ‘No, babe, I’m just waking up’ / And now what? / I’m left starin’ at the ceilin’, listin’ reasons you should pack all your sh*t up” so perfectly describes the constant fear that your partner is going to leave because of the pain that was inflicted by everyone that had left before. “Doors” is about learning to let you guard down and to let others love you the way you deserve. Also– can we talk about how important the pause between “jump” and “at the rattle of your keys” is? It is such a subtle way to show just how painful this insecurity can be.
When Kahan released the first single and the title track of the album, “The Great Divide,” I swear it was the only song I listened to until the next single, “Porch Light,” came out. I’ve seen many different interpretations of this track, but the general consensus is that it is about the ending of a friendship. Specifically, this song seems to portray a friendship that ended because of miscommunication or misunderstandings.
With the lines, “I hope you’re scared of all the ordinary sh*t / like murderers and ghosts and cancer on your skin / and not your soul and what He might do with it” cue me into thinking this person struggled to ask for help from the people around them or the people around them struggled to notice, so they turned to religion. My favorite lines are in the outro: “I hope you threw a brick right into that stained glass / I hope you’re with someone who isn’t scared to ask.” The friendship ended badly, and the speaker lives with regrets, but they still wish the other person well, even though they can’t talk anymore. Being the title track, this song is a clear example of the message Kahan wants to get across with the album, singing, “You inched yourself across the great divide.”
As an eldest daughter who desperately needed to pack up and leave the small town she grew up in, Kahan’s music always hits hard for me. “Dashboard” was an especially painful listen (in a good way, of course). Written from the perspective of the people Kahan left behind in Vermont, “Dashboard” is a direct contrast to his song “You’re Gonna Go Far” on Stick Season: Forever. It presents the idea that maybe his town and the people in it weren’t the problem– he was. The very first two lines of the song jump right into that idea, singing, “You always went lookin’ for an easy way out / Leave the pain you can’t solve with the folks you let down.” Like, ouch. The chorus of the song repeats, “Turns out that you’re still an asshole,” voicing his deepest insecurities. My favorite lines of the song are “It ain’t our fault that you aren’t somebody else / ‘Cause you’ve worked on yourself, got a dog.”
Before The Great Divide was released, Kahan went on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Fallon asked him what the vibes of the album were, and Kahan responded with, “Yeah. It’s pretty sad… If something is going wrong in your life and it’s raining, I recommend.”
That’s my kind of music!
To me, the top song to listen to when it’s raining out is definitely “Willing and Able.” Once again, this track seems to be about a severed relationship–in Kahan’s case, I think it’s a sibling or another family member–and the longing to reach out, but feeling like you can’t. Something has wedged a great divide between the two, but they refuse to talk about it. Kahan sings that he’s “willing and able” to have the conversation, but the person he’s singing to isn’t: “Look at you leavin’ again, it’s all you know how to do.” Although, like many of the songs on his album, it seems like it could be written from the perspective of someone else to Kahan, based on the lines, “They say you’re a light, all I see is a shadow / and I’ll see you again in six months, when you need your next song.”
In the bridge, you can hear the ache and longing in Kahan’s voice. Each line piles the pain onto the next, beginning with, “Oh, I wish you could know me / And I wish I could know you much more sometimes.” In the outro, Kahan repeats, “I’d be willing and able” eight times, begging the other person to talk, before closing with “If you’re willing, I’m able.” This song is definitely a very, very close second on the album.
Fans were confused as to why a song he had been teasing, “Staying Still,” had not been included on the album. Then, not even 24 hours after the album came out, Kahan released four more tracks, calling the full collection The Great Divide: The Last Of The Bugs. While most fans were ecstatic to get “Staying Still” and three other new songs, some fans were critical of this decision, calling it a money-grab because the songs will most likely be printed on a different vinyl than the one that fans pre-ordered. Personally, it’s hard for me to care about the capitalism of it all when one of the four songs he released was “Orbiter.”
“Orbiter” tells the story of Kahan’s sudden rise to fame and the good and the bad that comes with it. He describes the disappointment of being at an award show already knowing he will lose. He sings about how he feels out of place there in the lines, “This ain’t Watertown / I’m on alien ground.” But, no matter how jarring this experience is, he always has his partner to keep him stable. He describes himself as an astronaut and his partner as the moon– he orbits her, and her “gravity” keeps him in. She is constantly reassuring him in the lines, “You said some people don’t know why they’re wolves / They just howl for the sound of it / some will never know they’re beautiful / Until the crowd points it out for them.” When Kahan worries about getting lost in the fame and forgetting why he sings in the first place, his partner reminds him that he has a purpose. As long as she loves him, he will be okay.
In the outro, Kahan repeats, “If I’m gonna lose you either way,” demonstrating that despite everything, the insecurity that she is going to leave still exists. I choose to ignore this part, though–as much as I love sad songs, this one is just too beautiful to let it end that way.
I could probably write a whole article about each individual track–there is just so much to dissect and to praise. I don’t think this album has any skips, but some of my other favorites are “American Cars,” “Downfall,” and “23.”
After the success of Stick Season, Kahan talked a lot about the pressure he felt to make sure his next album was even better. He struggled with this pressure, saying in his documentary that he found it difficult to write at all because of it. Even though no one doubted him for a second–he literally can’t write a bad song– he was 100% successful in writing The Great Divide.